Norwegians search for the high-fibre hog
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Canola meal contains up to three times the fibre level of conventionally-used soybean meal. Now researchers are seeking hog lines that can perform well on higher fibre rations.
by NORMAN DUNN
An international research program has set out to identify and breed swine that perform well on high fibre diets. Breeding stock selection in the last half-century has been based on performance of swine fed soybean meal as their main protein source. Nowadays, there's increased interest in using canola meal in this role, mainly because it can be locally sourced in more northern latitudes. But canola meal can have three times higher fibre content than soybeans. This extra roughage reduces feeding performance with the hybrids available to most of the hog sector. This is why there's increased interest in breeding lines that perform better on canola.
Selection work has already been started by the Norwegian organization Norsvin, daughter offshoot of Topigs, one of the world's largest swine breeders. The first 20 swine are now in feeding trials with higher fibre rations. Weight gain and muscular development are being compared. Scientists will also use biomarkers to identify genetic sequences that appear to be valuable for performance under high fibre diets. The number of hogs involved in the trials will expand in followup trials, say the Norwegians.
It is only 10 years since another Scandinavian program determined that higher fibre diets were good for breeding sows. Then, the Danish Pig Production Centre reported "a significant improvement" in gastric health of sows where fibre was increased during gestation and nursing periods with 10 per cent sugar beet pellets added to conventional grain-based diets.
The fifth litter performance factor
Germany's federal swine breeding program (BHZP) has introduced a new performance factor for its hybrid sows – the "lifetime performance piglet index." This gives a benchmark figure for how many sows in the herd produce at least five litters and the total liveborn piglets produced in the process. The index calculates sow survival rate up to the fifth farrowing as a percentage of all first inseminated sows in the herd multiplied by piglets produced by these sows.
BHZP has included the new index in its latest breeding software. The difference it shows between farms is highlighted by a test carried out last year with the best sow herd achieving a piglet production figure for sows with their fifth litter at 6099 while the figure for the worst performing herd lay at 3570 piglets.
A separate sow-breeding group of farms also benchmarked some of its members using the new index and averaged 3777 piglets. And the best 10 per cent managed an impressive 5055 average. BHZP feels the new index puts management into very sharp perspective because the figure not only gains from the number of sows reaching and completing the fifth litter but also reflects the number of piglets brought safely into the world at each farrowing.
Bad news for bowl drinkers
The Danish research mentioned above clearly shows the water waste (over 30 per cent) occurring with drinking nipples, especially in well-stocked feeding hog pens. This is the main reason there's still a solid minority of swine producers in Europe willing to accept all the disadvantages of bowl drinkers – the daily cleaning, the extra disease risk and also the danger of reduced water intake with dirty bowls.
Maybe they'll change their minds after reading the latest results from Germany, where South Westphalia University researchers found during on-farm investigations that weaner mortality is more than doubled when drinking bowls are used instead of nipples.
Based on results from three commercial weaner rearing units, the German team led by Prof. Marc Boelhauve found that water in the bowls had up to 100 times higher bacteria level compared with nipple supplies. The associated bad news for bowls was that daily liveweight gain of weaners in pens with bowls averaged 50 grams less, and mortality for the bowl weaners was 3.3 per cent compared with 1.4 per cent for the nipple drinker pens.
The research involved a total of 281 weaners in pens with bowl drinkers and 421 in nipple drinker pens. Because of the dramatic differences in animal performance in this first test, the South Westphalia University plans a series of further comparisons of swine drinking systems on farms in northwest Germany.
Boelhauve advises that the risks with bowl drinkers can be reduced by routine checking of bowl cleanliness at short intervals and flushing of the system, especially where pens have been standing empty for more than a few days. A thorough flushing of each pen system immediately before a new batch of hogs comes in is crucial.
The clear message: Bowls might save water compared with nipple drinkers, but in the long run you'll probably be paying more in vet fees and hog performance loss.
Checking hog health through water intake
As an early warning of disease in feeder pens, scientists from Aarhus University in Denmark have devised ways of measuring hog water intake. Heidi Mai-Lis Andersen in the university's department of animal science feels there's potential for developing a new monitoring tool here.
To discover the standard expected behaviour in this context, Dr. Andersen's team took 52 castrated weaners averaging 20.5 kilograms liveweight, attached transponder ear tags for individual measurement of drinking periods and penned them in groups of three or 10, each pen with a single water nipple. With water flow per pen measured every second, recorded drinking behaviour of each hog showed stocking rate per pen did not affect intake. This levelled out over four consecutive days at almost exactly five litres daily with more than 30 per cent of drinking water wasted.
On average, each hog visited its water outlet 44 times in 24 hours. The most visits to the drinkers took place in the 10-hog pens with individual drinking sessions often interrupted by other animals wanting a drink. The time of day made a difference, too, with the lower stocked hogs not bothering so much with drinking during the afternoon when they were resting.
The Danish researchers point out that this is only the first stage in research to establish pen drinking behaviour as a health monitoring tool. Results so far spotlight the importance of considering external factors such as stocking rate, time of day and length of each drinking period. What does this mean for the farmer? One: healthy hogs have the ability to react quickly to external factors for ensuring adequate water intake. Two: for accurate information, 24-hour recording is important. Three: a spin-off here is new knowledge of the high wastage of water.
Signal tones stop weaner warfare
The struggle for dominance in the hog world first gets serious when litters are mixed in weaner pens. The resulting injuries and performance loss naturally cost a lot of money. But there's also the consumer concern about animal welfare to be considered now. Together, these two factors have shown a huge increase in trials of ways to divert aggressive young swine towards less fighting and more feeding. Straw and/or playthings such as chains or plastic toys are accepted almost everywhere now. Researchers at the Institute for Animal Hygiene, Welfare and Ethology at Hanover Veterinary University in Germany are now looking into audio distraction for weaners. Signal tones as a way of breaking-up weaner wrangles work well on a research farm currently, say the scientists.
The basis of the first trial is an electronic feed dispenser in nine pens filled with mixed groups selected from 95 weaners. When the feeders are ready to deliver, a horn sounds. In most cases, it doesn't matter how involved the piglets are in fighting, the action stops immediately the signal sounds.
On the research farm, piglets start getting used to audio signals in the farrowing pen with mini-dispensers in the creep. These are remotely operated with an appropriate signal when a small sample of feed is released. Around 60 per cent of piglets learnt to quickly move to the feed dispenser when the audio alarm sounded. After moving weaners into rearing pens, the system was first tested by introducing "stranger" weaners into the group. The dominance struggles that almost immediately started proved to be quickly stopped by the audio signal system in around 80 per cent of cases.
The Hanover researchers found that the feed dispenser with audio system mostly broke up "aggressive interactions" and resulted in fewer injuries with an expected increase in performance, not only during the rearing phase, but also throughout the hog feeding period. At feeding time, 80 per cent of fights in the weaner pens are broken up by a signal horn. BP