sow – Swine in Minnesota

Prop 12 compliance – A podcast episode on early field experience

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.

With several successful California Prop 12 certifications behind her, Dr. Cara Haden from Pipestone Veterinary Services has important insights about the compliance process. She shares with the At The Meeting team how important detailed documentation is to the Prop 12 certification process.

Characterization of dead animal removal facilities, structures, and practices on sow herds; invitation to participate

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.

University of Minnesota researchers Igor Paploski, Brenna Werner, and Kimberly VanderWaal invite veterinarians and producers overseeing sow farms to enroll in a project looking at disease outbreaks among sow herd.

Investigation of sow mortality in a US system

A recent publication from the MSHMP team in the journal Vet Record analyzed around 10 years of production records to describe sow mortality and its associated risk factors across four different farms in the Midwest.

Best of Leman 2022: Chantal Farmer – Increasing sow milk yield via greater mammary development in prepubertal and late-pregnant gilts

This is our most popular series on the blog. Once a month, we are sharing with you a presentation given at the Allen D. Leman swine conference, on topics that the swine group found interesting, innovative or that lead to great discussions.

You can find all of the presentations selected from previous conferences on the blog here.

Today we hear about increasing sow milk yield from Chantal Farmer of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, which was one of the most talked about breakout sessions at the 2022 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.