Veterinary student, did you shadow a swine practitioner this summer or were involved in an interesting clinical case investigation? Did you work on your veterinary skills by designing a differential diagnosis list or working on a treatment plan? Did you investigate a problem by analyzing production records? Share your work at the Allen D. Leman Swine Conference to win the Morrison Swine Innovator Prize!
Continue reading “The Morrison Swine Innovator Prize for DVM Students continues at the Allen D. Leman Swine Conference!”Impact of Enrichment on the Behavior of Sows Housed in Groups
Drs. Ventura and Zhitnitskiy, faculty members in the College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resources and the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Minnesota recently published a new article regarding the influence of point-source enrichment on the behavior of gestating sows housed in groups. The article is available in open-access on the Frontiers in Animal Science website.
Key Points
- Most common observed behaviors were sows being inactive (73%), followed by sham-chewing (16%). Enrichment use made up only 1% of observations.
- Number of observed interactions with enrichment decreased sharply on the second day.
- Low-parity sows, moderately-lame sows, and sham-chewing sows interacted more with the enrichment.
- No increase in adverse effects (agonistic behaviors, sham-chewing) was observed.
Modeling the transmission and vaccination strategy for PRRS virus
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, the Science Page is written by Dr. Galvis et al. from the Machado lab at North Carolina State University. They report their results with modeling PRRSv transmission in situations where vaccines can be used as mitigation tools.
Continue reading “Modeling the transmission and vaccination strategy for PRRS virus”Producing a climate neutral pig?
Podcasts are a perfect way to get caught up with new swine information! We are presenting you the latest episode from “At The Meeting… Honoring Dr. Bob Morrison” in collaboration with SwineCast.
This episode brings insight on livestock and the environment. Animal agriculture is often labeled as part of the climate change problem. Understanding the differences between greenhouse gasses like CO2, methane and nitrous oxide is key to reframing animal agriculture as part of a climate change solution.
Continue reading “Producing a climate neutral pig?”Five hundred and counting!
Five hundred posts and counting! This is a milestone for our page and while we take a moment to reflect on the past 5 years, we would love to hear from you. Tell us how we are doing and what we should focus on for the next 500 posts! We value your feedback and we know your time is precious so we will keep it short. Thank you for helping us better serve you!