This is our Friday rubric: every week a new Science Page from the Bob Morrison’s Swine Health Monitoring Project. The previous editions of the science page are available on our website.
This week’s edition reports the latest research on modeling the spread of swine vesicular diseases based on farm structure and number of sites. The model was then used to establish an expected time to detection. Two virus strains (high versus low virulence) were evaluated with the model to assess how the strain would influence the time to detection in a farm.
Key points from this week edition:
- The models showed that the virus persisted longer in farms with a farrowing unit.
- It is more difficult to diagnose FMD when the strains cause low mortality or no mortality.
Click on the link to see the details about disease spread models.