Articles - Pig health

Vitamin D₃ plays a central role in the immune response of swine . 25-OH D₃ may be a more efficient source to improve vitamin D status of pigs than cholecalciferol.

Percentage of prolapsed sows has consistently increased every year, from 4.8 in 2012 to 10.2% in 2016.

Gilt acclimation was performed in 78% surveyed European farms; vaccination, alone or combined with natural exposure to infected animals, was the main used strategy.

It is very important to analyze new PRRSV sequences against a broad reference set representing the farm, the system and the region, as well as the sequences of available commercial vaccines (this will make it possible to differentiate between field and vaccine strains).

The average piglet birth weight from the 3 groups of vaccinated sows was statistically higher than that from the unvaccinated sows.

Three factors must be taken into account when defining the viability of the elimination of M. hyopneumoniae on each farm: negative replacements, cost and return on investment, and risk of re-infection.

The diseases shared by livestock and wildlife involve many players: mainly farmers, but also hunters and different public administrations.

Modern startup farms may have less pressure of respiratory diseases infection in winter as they usually have good ventilation design. However, the clinical case described here is an App outbreak in a startup farm with modernized ventilation design.

No single strategy will confer total protection. A well-orchestrated combination of various methods adjusted to a single production unit or system will be needed.

This article describes the main diseases that wild boars can transmit to the domestic pig, their prevalences and transmission routes. It also discusses the increase of the wild boar population in Europe.

Mucosal surfaces, constantly exposed to foreign antigens, have developed the ability to protect the host from potentially harmful organisms by means of innate and acquired immune responses.

After over 20 years of research effort, the question of how to balance efforts in Salmonella control among the preharvest, harvest, and post-harvest sectors remains alive, but ‘silver bullets’ for on-farm control of Salmonella in pigs have proven elusive.

Spain is, regarding pig census, the third country in the world in relation to pig production, behind China and the USA, and the fourth as pork producer because Germany fattens many piglets imported from The Netherlands and Denmark, and it also slaughters pigs from these and other countries.

Frequently, diseases become established on a farm because we culture them.

Enric Marco discusses a trial that concludes that the later the infection by M. hyorhinis occurs, the less serious it is. This information can be very useful to devise new control strategies in the era of antibiotic reduction.

Dr. Robert Morrison created the Swine Health Monitoring Project in 2011 and, after his tragic loss, in May 2017 the program was renamed.

The farmer contacted the veterinary surgeon concerning an increase of subcutaneous haemorrhages and bruises in the skin of several piglets in eight different litters. No deaths have yet been attributed to the problem.

Curiously, when I started to think about it, what I had considered as my number one mistake for most of my professional life became the fifth in importance.

What is a priority and what is not? It depends on the risks and the PRRSV status of the farm…

This article relates different microbiome profiles to greater or lesser severity in clinical signs, lesions and viral load in a co-infection with PRRS and PCV2 viruses, opening a window of opportunity.

In the primary humoral immune response, a single class IgM in monomeric form is initially secreted. The secondary response induced by a subsequent exposure to the same antigen will be mainly characterized by the production of IgG isotype but at higher titre and affinity.

Understanding water consumption and knowing the factors that can affect it, are important points in animal production and health.

List of practical measures applied in our daily work with good results. Those measures must be considered as a whole and never individually.