Austria selects for lifetime production
Friday, June 7, 2013
At just under seven litters per sow lifetime, Austria already has the best record in Europe, but it thinks it can do still better
by NORMAN DUNN
Even though Austria's parity performance is already one of the best in Europe at just under seven litters per sow lifetime, the country's national hybrid swine organization is aiming at further advances by introducing a new factor for swine performance – productive lifetime.
Just short of 25 per cent of all Austrian F1 sows bring 10 litters or more into the world. This is balanced by 22 per cent of the national herd being sent down the road before they produce their fourth litter.
Research covering 215,000 mother sows for the Austrian F1 hybrid – and taking into account non-genetic influences such as climate and farm environment – indicates that the heritability of longer productive lifetime is, at 0.11, exactly the same as for the characteristic "born alive piglets per litter." Most important factors within this heritability trait for sow survival under modern production systems are the sow constitution and, particularly, feet and legs. The hybrid program is based on the Landrace crossed with Large White (Edelschwein) for F1 females. Pietrain boars are almost always used as terminal sires there.
Could there be a "super sow" line on the horizon? The Austrians report that their best performer in the national program so far (born in 2000) produced 26 litters and 288 liveborn piglets!
But most countries in Europe are aiming for the five-to-six parity target, although Italian breeders obviously keep their F1 sows much longer in the herd. Average sow performance records collected for 2010 by the U.K. sector's representative organisation, the British Pig Production Executive (BPEX), highlight Italy as best parity performer with sows producing an average of 6.6 litters (herd replacement rate: 33 per cent). BPEX hasn't so far recorded the Austrian performance.
The British result in this field isn't so spectacular with five litters in a sow lifetime, giving a herd replacement rate of 43 per cent. But this isn't really too bad, considering that some 25 per cent of the British herd is bred outdoors under fairly tough conditions. And the worst? Sweden, where sows manage just 4.2 litters per lifetime (52.6 per cent).
Naturally enough, higher annual piglet production rates are harder on sows and no doubt contribute to a shorter production life on average. But a glance at the BPEX European results indicate that pigs reared per sow/year is a fairly uniform figure, running from 22 to 24. Only one country breaks the mould here: the Netherlands, with 27.11 hogs per sow reared on average. Sow replacement rate in Dutch herds is also very acceptable at 43 per cent and a lifetime litter production averaging 5.48.
Piglet oedema – the single jab solution
Swine producers in Germany and Switzerland now have a new weapon on the market against the deadly piglet oedema. A vaccine offering complete immunity against the cause of this disease, the E. coli-produced shiga toxin, can be bought by farmers.
On test farms, the new vaccine, produced by IDT Biologika, is proving effective when injected in four-day piglets. After around 25 days, immunity is developed by the young animals and this lasts, according to trial results, right through the rearing and feeding/finishing period.
On the European mainland, swine oedema has been particularly damaging, causing widespread deaths and affecting farms apparently arbitrarily. Sometimes there are sporadic outbreaks every few years. But, all too often, the disease seems to settle in a particular herd more or less permanently. Records in Germany indicate that around 10 per cent weaner/rearer mortality is common in chronically affected herds. In 2012, this level of loss was reckoned to reduce annual margin per sow by the equivalent of C$110.
Most often, symptoms start over the first weeks post-weaning, with piglets becoming disoriented, trembling and unsteady in their movements. While there's plenty of evidence that management standards such as general hygiene and quality of feed have a considerable influence on oedema presence, there are still plenty of open questions as to how the toxin-producing E. coli strains, as opposed to the better-known strains that cause diarrhea outbreaks for instance, become established in some herds and not in others.
The new vaccination is, therefore, all the more welcome as a preventive routine, with test results on German farms indicating 100 per cent immunity. For instance, one study with some 320 piglets showed no mortality in the vaccinated group while 11.4 per cent deaths occurred in the untreated control group.
French government seeks EU concessions for swine producers
This March, Christiane Lambert, vice-president of France's influential FNSAE farmers' association, said that feed purchases account for 70 per cent of hog producers' costs. The result is a squeeze on margins that is shoving livestock producers throughout Europe into near-bankruptcy, he claims.
Even France's socialist president, François Hollande recognizes that a change of policy within the European Union (EU) is crucial if many livestock farmers are to remain in business after the present period of high feed, fertilizer and energy prices. What Hollande appears to be calling for this spring and summer is a more or less permanent system controlling feed prices – or at least one that continually regulates supply contracts between farmers and feed suppliers as well as farmers and their processors so that margins can be automatically protected.
Speaking this spring, the president also indicated he wants to see EU-wide concessions to hog farmers – as well as other livestock producers – so that the Union's increasingly strict environment protection laws are relaxed in their case. In particular, this demand targets nitrate control regulations, which require increasing investment in new buildings, manure storage or biogas production plants.
Direct payments to help hog producers and other livestock farmers, either from the EU in Brussels or even as part of a go-it-alone system in France, are among possible solutions put forward currently by France's Minister of Agriculture Stéphane Le Foll.
Le Foll also wants a politically-approved system automatically controlling contracts, so that a workable margin can be ensured for farmers. Other arguments now being presented by the French government to help livestock farmers include the possibility of more financial aid for those producing in what the Europeans call "disadvantaged areas" (help with transport and labour social costs). The politicians also want to see more encouragement for investment in renewable energy production on hog farms.
The agricultural community in France is well known for rebellions against EU farming policies and attempts to ensure a fair living for farmers. The big difference this time around is that there's government backing from Paris for most of the arguments – as well as from livestock farmers throughout Europe.
A window into modern hog production
Henrik Lütke Brintrup runs a 280-sow, farrow-to-finish business near Münster in northwest Germany, and he's very tired of the increasing critics in his country claiming unhygienic, crowded conditions for the animals in his modern barns.
So he's taken a very practical approach in presenting an argument to city dwellers and any other interested passers-by that there's nothing to hide on good, commercial swine production units. Brintrup has done this by fitting windows, so that anyone can take a look inside at any time. He's the first swine producer in this hog-intensive region to encourage outsiders to take a look for themselves. Also supplied on the spot is plenty of free literature explaining the process and the management requirements in producing healthy hogs.
Naturally, disease control means the other side of the glass is as close as any stranger can get to the 2,400 growers and feeders, or the sows and their litters. But this farmer, who's also cropping around 300 acres on his old-established family farm (records go back to 1290), finds most are happy with their close-up view of pork production. Even a few days after announcing the feature this spring, whole school classes were contacting him to arrange visits.
The local Münster-Roxel Farmers' Association supports the Brintrup initiative, commenting that the action lets everyone who's interested get the real picture. The hogs on this farm are fed in 45-head pens with liveweight target at slaughter around 115 kilograms.
Fine-ground feed boosts weaner weight gain
Grinding weaner feed a bit finer is improving weight gain performance of piglets between eight and 30 kilograms liveweight by as much as 18 grams per day (plus three per cent) in current Danish trials. The feed is ground down until 65 per cent is under one-millimetre sieve aperture and the rest above (65:35). Coarser 40:60 feed is used for control groups. Feed conversion is also slightly improved with the finer feed, as is piglet health in general.
Results so far show mortality lowered by 0.3 per cent while the percentage dead, plus those removed to hospital pens, is 3.9 per cent for the fine-ground feed piglets and seven per cent for the control. Only in the case of diarrhea treatments does the fine-ground feed group lose out in the Danish trials, with more cases of scour than the rough-ground feed group.
In Denmark, fine-ground feed was once commonly offered to feeders. But just a few years ago it was found to create intestinal problems, including ulcers. The reaction was a wholesale swing to coarser-ground feed. This stretched right back into the weaning rations and this is why Danish researchers are reviewing the best feed consistency for younger swine.
This particular trial at the Pig Research Centre involves 390 weaners on the same basic ration, including 67 per cent wheat and 22.5 per cent soybean meal. Recording starts when the swine have reached eight kilograms liveweight (lw). The weaners are then fed right through to 30 kilogram.
Some of the trial piglets are also being tested for the effect of supplemental carbohydrate-splitting enzyme (BS3 xylanase) in both the fine and coarse-ground diets. The results here indicate that the xylanase improves weight gain performance on coarse-ground feed by around 16 grams per day, but makes little difference to the improved fine-ground group results. In each case, though, using xylanase in feed certainly covers costs, according to the Danish researchers.
Germany's ‘swine mobile' – pork PR on wheels
For years now, hog farmers have been the bad guys in Europe's popular press and television. Media exposés almost invariably leave a poor impression on city folks by showing the worst of conditions and not the average situation. And disease avoidance precautions naturally mean that the general public are never allowed to get a closer look at the real thing.
This year, the German swine sector is setting out to change all this and spread a much more positive image of the pork production chain. The central association for German swine production (ZDS) is among the organizations gathering sponsorship from farming and industry for launching the country's first so-called "swine mobile." This is a hog pen on wheels: a big trailer demonstrating the layout in standard housing with feeding equipment, but also featuring a wide screen on the forward wall with scenes from normal swine production shown in continual film.
Dr. Jens Ingwersen, managing director of ZDS, describes the image-promoting trailer as a way of giving consumers everywhere an honest look at real hog production. The aim is to pull the trailer from city to city across the land whenever there's a crowd-drawing event. At the same time, swine (and other livestock) producers will run a campaign to allow the public insight into more local hog production.
Footing most of this bill is the German farmers' union (DBV). The program loosens up cash to allow individual farmers to build, for example, a viewing room outside their hog barn so that visiting school classes can get a closer look at the real story through a window and also learn all about each farmers' production system.
Danish sow feed formula offers fewer runts and more milk
Can we feed gestating sows for a targeted boost in fetus growth, giving more litter uniformity at birth? That's a question being pondered in Denmark this year by a team at the University of Aarhus headed by researcher Niels Oksbjerg. The search for the right ingredients is being helped with a C$900,000 grant from the Danish Council for Independent Research, Technology and Production.
Denmark's swine sector has increased average litter size from 13 to 16 piglets over the last 20 years. Unfortunately, mortality in the first few days has also gone up – from 17 per cent in 1992 to 25 per cent nowadays. Right now, extensive practical trials in Denmark prove that this figure can easily be halved through more intensive management at farrowing. But further reductions need to come from somewhere else.
Right at the top of direct piglet survival factors has to be bodyweight at birth. It's the lightweight litter members that cause most problems in survival management and this is why the spotlight is now turning on feeding the pregnant sow, not only for bigger litters but also for fewer runts and therefore more uniform litter member weight.
Starting this January, the Oksbjerg team is following up a concept that extra non-essential amino acids in the sow diet can boost foetus development. Not only that, but these substances, which include alanine, asparagine, glutamine and serinine, also appear to stimulate colostrum and milk production. Now, non-essential amino acids are, of course, manufactured by swine themselves. So, up until recently, most nutrition research centred on the essential amino acids – the ones that have to be supplied through feed. But increasing external supply of the other amino acids, the bioactive non-essential amino acids, is understood to stimulate and increase blood flow and thus transport of oxygen and nutrients across the placenta and, later, to the milk veins in the udder.
Oksbjerg says his team hopes to address the need for increased birth weight of the smallest piglets and also improve their chances of survival in the first few critical days with more bioactive amino acids in the sow rations.
"Our hypothesis is that blood flow rate will be increased across the placenta and that this should increase fetus growth through more muscle development."
This scientist underlines the all-round advantages from the approach his team is testing through 2013. The supplementary feeding of the sow is something that can be carried out on any farm with a potential for directly increasing farmer profits through reducing piglet mortality. The solution also offers a boost to the general hog farming image with fewer deaths in the pork production chain.
Flavoured feed for weaners pays off in the Netherlands
Feed intake during and after weaning is a key factor in getting a flying start to weight gain and hog development, and there's hardly a farmer that doesn't have a special trick up the sleeve to help get more feed into the young growing pig at this critical stage.
But wouldn't it be better if piglets were introduced to a taste or aroma before they were born with the same characteristic in mother's milk and their creep and weaner feed?
Wageningen University's Department of Animal Sciences had already been working on the effects of appetizer components in swine rations. With sow rations, these seemed to encourage feed intake during nursing when the sows can otherwise lose appetite and body condition. Appetite-boosting flavours include simple sweeteners such as saccharine, but also garlic, vanilla, aniseed or the multi-talent oregano which now proves to have health-giving properties, too.
To take the effect further, Dutch researchers have now started including aniseed flavouring, for example, in sow feed from day 98 of gestation and then through the suckling period. Piglet creep feed is then flavoured with the same product, as are rations for the young hogs during and after weaning.
In first trials, performance of piglets with prenatal exposure to aniseed flavouring through placenta fluid and during suckling was compared with control piglets with no exposure to feed flavouring. First of all, the animals on the flavoured rations started solid feeds earlier than control. Up to weaning, the piglets in the flavoured feed litters developed more uniformly. There was less difference between the lightest and the heavier litter members compared with control litters. Feed intake and weight gain was better with the flavour feed groups, at least for the first days after weaning.
At weaning and grouping in new pens, the piglets were tested for stress, this being usually done in Europe by measuring the cortisone content of blood. These tests indicated that the weaners from flavoured feed pens were markedly less stressed than the control animals on non-flavoured diet. As expected from these results, the weaners on flavoured feed were also quieter and showed less aggression.
The results have encouraged some farmers to start their own flavoured feed systems with some success, according to local media in the Netherlands. And at least one major Dutch feed firm has introduced its own "vertical feed program" with the same taste and aroma substances in sow and piglet feed. BP