Uncategorized – Page 17 – Swine in Minnesota

University of Minnesota swine graduate students awarded National Pork Board’s Real Pork Scholars

Real Pork Scholars is a professional executive mentorship program for graduate students that is designed to leave a lasting impact on participants and the U.S. pork industry. Experience as a Real Pork Scholar will launch students into the next phase of their careers. The program offers students mentorship, peer-to-peer network building, professional training, and funding for relevant research. At the same time, the U.S. pork industry will gain enhanced insights by filling research gaps and building strong connections with emerging thought leaders.

This year’s Scholars include UMN graduate students Haley Schwecke and Sudario Roberto Silva Junior.

Can you estimate PRRSV piglet prevalence using family oral fluids? Yes, you can.

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.

Today’s Science Page brings together researchers from three continents! Onyekachukwu Osemeke, Eduardo Costa, Vinicius Weide, Swaminathan Jayaraman, Gustavo Silva, and Daniel Linhares share how to estimate PRRS prevalence at the piglet level in a farrowing room based on the results of family oral fluid testing.

Farm management practices associated with influenza contamination of people working in swine farms

We hope all our US readers had a great Memorial Day weekend. Today, we are talking about farm practices and flu in farm workers. This recent publication from the Torremorell lab is available in open access on the Porcine Health Management journal website.

Take-away points

Naïve piglets becoming infected with influenza before weaning participates in the endemic status of sow farms.
Numerous interactions between piglets and farm workers happen pre-weaning (e.g. processing, vaccinations)
Between 16% and 94% of the samples taken post-activity from farm workers’ hands and clothing were PCR positive for influenza.
Activities during the peri-weaning period had almost 6 times higher risk of flu detection.

Summary: The evaluation of an artificial intelligence system for estrus detection in sows

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.

In this week’s Science Page, researchers Steven Verhoeven, Ilias Chantziaras, Elise Bernaerdt , Michel Loicq , Ludo Verhoeven and Dominiek Maes share the results of a study done on the accuracy of estrus detectus using AI technology on three commercial Belgian farms.

U of M researchers lead major African swine fever breakthrough

University of Minnesota researchers recently led successful efforts to work on African swine fever virus (ASFV), developing and validating a surrogate virus for ASFV that will help develop effective mitigation strategies to control ASFV and keep it from entering North America. The disease has devastated pig populations and pork production in countries around the world.