Articles - Pig health

Achieving good levels of colostral immunity by vaccinating sows is the first step to prevent scours; subsequently, active pre or post-weaning immunization must be added to prevent post-weaning diarrhoea.

PCV2 vaccination is nearly universal. Has viral presence decreased after 6 years of vaccination? Could vaccination policies be changed?

In the coming years, the use of antimicrobials will be more closely regulated, following the guidelines set by the WHO in its global report on antimicrobial resistance in 2014.

Exposure during acclimatization can be considered the first dose of a vaccine, and pre-farrowing exposure its booster.

Oedema disease prevention has traditionally been accomplished through the administration of antibiotics or manipulation of gut microbiota through diet. However, in recent years, many vaccines have been developed to prevent clinical manifestation of the disease.

The farmer, alarmed, calls us describing a clinical picture of abortions in the last third of gestation, weak newborn piglets, stillbirths, mummified piglets, agalactia, sows with fever and small litters.

It appears that the use of non-toxigenic C. difficile as a probiotic can reduce the severity of histologic lesions and the quantity of toxins detected in neonatal piglets.

The economic potential lost in a unit positive to PRRS could be around 35 – 37% of net unit margin.

The recent development of PCR serotyping is a step forward that allows any laboratory to determine the serotype of the isolated H. parasuis strain.

Assessment of a study, by Enric de Marco, on the use of anti-inflammatory drugs in sows at farrowing in order to reduce piglet mortality and increase the weight of piglets at weaning.

Diarrhoea is their most typical clinical manifestation, and the earlier the onset, the more harmful it is. Newborn piglets can present with another clinical picture, with signs of sepsis (shock, depression, death, polyarthritis), which is associated with an extraintestinal E. coli.

In the United States, there are 17 genetic clades that have emerged and persisted following spillover events from non-swine (namely human) hosts and subsequent ecological and evolutionary processes

Management factors and environmental conditions are often triggers or predisposing agents, not only to the clinical presentation of the disease, but also its severity and course.

We are talking about PRRSV, M. hyo, PCV2, App and swine influenza virus.

The article provides an alternative to the current vaccination programs that could be the solution for farms with early onset oedema disease. However, this alternative —consisting of vaccinating the dams at the end of gestation to achieve post-weaning piglets immunization—, also raises questions...

Needle-free injection technology improves the dispersion of vaccines throughout the tissue.

Genetic selection provides a powerful tool to improve and maintain gut health in industrial pig production, and may in the future become a more sustainable alternative to the currently massive need for antibiotics.

Presumed causes of ear necrosis are many and generally speculative; indeed, there are many risk factors associated with ear necrosis including trauma from pen mates or the environment, overcrowding, commingling, high humidity, limited feeder or water space, misformulated rations, mycotoxins, viral diseases, or bacteria.

At autopsy, haemorrhagic enterocolitis with mucosal oedema, enlarged spleen and haemorrhagic mesentery were observed.

Without the participation in the program of all farms present in the area, progress will be minimal or nil.

Single animal treatment or batch medication? in any case, the treatment and choice of medication should be done based on resistance testing.

It has not proved possible to actively eliminate App from chronically affected permanently occupied breeder-feeder herds.

NFID administered swine vaccines can use half to a tenth of the dose required for intramuscular vaccines because of the higher antigen dispersion and contact with the antigen presenting cells found in skin.

All available vaccines in the European and North-American market are based on PCV2a genotype, while the most prevalent ones are PCV2b and PCV2d ones. Although significant level of cross-protection among these three genotypes has been demonstrated, it would be interesting to assess if vaccine efficiency would be equivalent in front of all these different genotypes.