The 2020 Allen D. Leman Swine Conference has moved online, giving you access to all the pre-conferences with a single registration!
Every year, the scientific committee organizes high-quality workshops and this year is no exception. Seven pre-conference sessions will be available on Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th and your registration gives you access to all of them! From the latest advances in pig survivability research to a deep-dive into farm biosecurity, you will find a topic to pique your interest. Conflicting times? With the online format, you can watch the presentations later.
Saturday Workshops
Water, What You Should Know About the Forgotten Nutrient
Water represents 80% of the weight of a newborn piglet and is the most essential of all nutrients (carbohydrates, protein, lipids, vitamins, and minerals). Yet in many nutrition audits and routine work, swine professionals overlook assessing the quantity and quality of water delivered to pigs, leading to misunderstanding and mismanagement of this important resource. Therefore, water is known as “the forgotten nutrient.” This workshop will derive from the knowledge of experts in swine nutrition and pork production to answer basic and applied questions about management of water for maximizing the performance of pigs.
Molecular Diagnostics Interpretation
Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have revolutionized how we approach disease investigations into farms. In this workshop, we will review how these technologies work and how they can help us investigate viral and bacterial diseases. This will be a hands-on, interactive workshop where participants will learn how to manipulate and interpret sequences and to apply this knowledge to pathogens such as Streptococcus suis.
Survival Workshop: Updates and Resources from the Improving Pig Survivability Project
The overall objective of Improving Pig Survivability project is to identify causative factors contributing to swine mortality in commercial production and to develop and disseminate strategies and information that can be used to maximize pig survivability.
Understanding and Predicting Between-Farm Disease Transmission
This preconference workshop will focus the current state of knowledge of between-farm disease transmission, with a particular focus on diseases of importance to the US swine industry, such as PRRS and PED. Activities will be composed of presentations and discussions on transmission risk, hands-on exercises on conceptualizing risk through development of causal diagrams, and recent research advances quantifying between-farm spread. Animal movements, windborne transmission, and the use of genetic data will be highlighted. We will end our workshop with an overview of the near real-time risk forecasting pipeline that has been operationalized by the University of Minnesota and discuss how to interpret and respond to risk forecasts.
Morrison Swine Innovator Prize Competition
This is the fourth year in which DVM students will present on clinical cases and problem-solving skills using innovative thinking. Again this year, students will compete for the Morrison Swine Innovator Prize. The Morrison Swine Innovator Prize honors the legacy of Dr. Bob Morrison by inspiring DVM students to pursue work that matters for the swine industry and in doing so, to follow his mantra of “Learn. Teach. Have fun.”
Sunday sessions
Tightening Biosecurity in Swine Farms
Preventing disease introduction into swine farms is central to swine production. Over the years, producers have implemented comprehensive biosecurity measures to keep diseases out from farms. However, as investigations from breaks identify gaps in biosecurity programs and new knowledge becomes available, biosecurity measures need to be revised and modified. In this workshop, we will share information learned from disease outbreak investigations, and we will review aspects of biosecurity programs that are often forgotten. Covering such topics as properly using UVC germicidal chambers, outbreaks linked to construction events, the latest on feed investigations, biosecurity protocols in growing pigs, and personalized biosecurity programs based on own risk of disease introduction, we plan to have a rich and enlightening session that will help producers and veterinarians reduce the risk of disease introduction into their farms.
Research Highlights
Covering a wide interest spectrum, the Research Highlights session showcases exciting research on production, health, and welfare.