The WLAC, now in its 49th year, is considered to be the “World Series and Super Bowl” of the livestock auctioneering profession.
“We are very pleased to be working with a worldwide leader in cattle vaccine products, a company that shares our members’ concerns about livestock health,” said LMA President David Macedo of BIVI’s highest level sponsorship of the competition.
“We realized that the livestock auction market owner has a key role in the value that producers capture for the cattle they sell and has a significant influence on the health protocols that producers follow,” BIVI Brand Manager Monica Porter said. “We want to partner with LMA members to help educate cattle producers on ways to improve their end product through flexible health programs, like our Range Ready Quality Feeder Calf program.”
The 2012 WLAC will be held June 16 at Turlock Livestock Auction Yard, Inc., Turlock, Calif. Thirty-three contestants will compete at an actual livestock sale and three titlists will be selected – world, reserve and runner-up champion. The Championship will be broadcast live at LMAAuctions.com.
The Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica staff veterinarian with a focus on PRRS, the swine disease that so many are trying to eliminate, is Dr. Reid Philips. Reid was on hand for this year’s PRRS ARC&E Seminar.
I asked Reid to provide a wrapup viewpoint about how this year’s seminar went. He says this year’s program came together really well. The seminar keeps growing each year and this year was no different. BIVI supplies a list of speakers that are involved in area control projects, several of whom you’ve heard from here on AgWired. Reid says that as new tools and studies are developed on PRRS this seminar becomes more important to producers. The value for both the participants and BIVI is the interaction and sharing of information.
Dr. Jim Branstad, Keota Veterinary Clinic, spoke about PRRS Surveillance in area regional control projects during the Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS Seminar. He should know all about pig surveillance since as he says, “I spend about 90 percent of my time with pigs.”
The message he had included the need to talk individually with producers in the project area. That one on one approach works well since he’s only had one producer who didn’t want to cooperate in the program. So besides having full participation if possible he says the next crucial thing is testing and this is a challenge. He says they’re doing surveillance testing but not as often as “we need to, to know everything.” He also spoke about there being too much pig movement within the area project he’s been involved with. He believes this is causing a lot of the problems they’ve been having.
Dr. Jim Lowe is an independent veterinarian and one of the attendees at the Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS ARC&E Seminar. He’s the guy on the Mac. I asked him why he attends this seminar.
Jim says that he spends a lot of time dealing with PRRS and this program allows him time to visit with colleagues and share information. He’s involved with several regional control projects and says this ability to share information is very valuable. He says these projects are “a tough row to hoe.” One of the things he’s been seeing is that the small well-defined projects with good producer participation are having some success. There’s that need for participation coming up again in one of my interviews. Jim says that sometimes it’s not so much a science project as much as a “persuasion” project to get producers to participate.
There is a serious financial impact from the PRRS disease in pigs and at the Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS Seminar we learned how much. Dr. Derold Holtkamp, Iowa State University, made a presentation titled, “Bio-economics: The Impact of PRRS & PRRS Control. He had recently completed a Pork Board cost of PRRS study and says they were able to use that data to calculate the impact of the disease in an area control project.
He says they looked at a Minnesota project which they felt best exemplified success at elimination of the disease and asked the question, “What was the value of the productivity improvements in that county after they successfully eliminated the virus there?” So they made a comparison between having the virus eliminated and projecting out to 2018, to if the area had continued in that time period without having the virus eliminated. The difference was positive $4.2 million to the county, using a net present value analysis, if they completed the project. That sounds like real value for going to the effort of getting rid of this disease!
Providing a report on the progress of the South-East Iowa PRRS ARC&E Project during the BIVI PRRS Seminar was Dr. Tim Loula, Swine Vet Center. He says these projects to try to eliminate Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome are similar to ones conducted some time ago for Pseudorabies. He says the Iowa program was started in a very pig dense area to get ready to “clean up” this virus. The project was started in 2010 and the goal was to have everyone do the same thing. He says it’s going to be a long journey.
Tim says they have about eighty percent buy in from producers in the area which has taken a lot of legwork. They’ve started mapping and have some early indication that the efforts have reduced some finishing mortality. This is going to be a multi-year project since PRRS is a very difficult virus and travels very fast in pig dense areas. If successful the area would be expanded and copied in other similar areas.
This is my favorite Dr. Laura. She’s Dr. Laura Batista, Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica and she was our moderator at the PRRS ARC&E Seminar in Chicago last week. I had to wait until today to get these posts done (more coming) since I had to re-voice my part of my interviews due to losing my voice end of last week. It’s almost back to normal.
So Dr. Batista says the goal of the seminar was to share all the new information about PRRS and PRRS control projects. By bringing a diverse group of scientists and veterinarians together BIVI hopes this will improve the spread of information and collaboration and perhaps avoid duplication of efforts which would save on resources. The seminar was divided into three sections. First was a report on a couple of area control projects. Then the presentations focused on the different tools that are available like mapping and monitoring and surveillance. Then the seminar ended in an open forum for questions and answers and additional sharing of information.
During the Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS ARC&E Seminar participants heard reports from some of those area regional control & elimination projects. One of those was the North-Central Illinois Project. Our speaker was Dr. Noel Garbes, Bethany Animal Hospital Swine Services.
Noel says the PRRS (porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome) project has been going on for about two years and early on they were feeling pretty good about it. However, as many have noticed, the fall season presents challenges. He says the question being dealt with now is manure pumping at that time of year. As he puts it, “we’re chilling pigs and stressing them so maybe there’s something that happens there.” So they’re taking a look at that like other projects in other areas are also doing. He also mentions that participation in the area has to be one hundred percent which is a constant struggle. Looking ahead he says that using filters may be the way to go.
Hello from the agriblogging highway at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica PRRS ARC&E Seminar in Chicago. We’ve got a good crowd. The ARC&E stands for Area Regional Control & Elimination of this seriouis swine disease.
I’m collecting photos and interviews. The interview will be posted during the next week since I’ve almost completely lost my voice. I’ll have to edit myself back in so you can understand me better. Hate it when this happens. Actually it has never happened like this before!
It may not look like much on the outside, but the new Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (BIVI) livestock vaccine research facility in Sioux Center, Iowa is everything a pig could want on the inside.
“It’s a state of the art facility,” said Dr. Phil Hayes, BIVI Executive Director for Biologicals Development. “To demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of new vaccines, we must start with pigs that are healthy.”
To keep the research pigs healthy, Phil says there is very limited access – which is why the dedication ceremony this week was held at the Ridge Golf Clubhouse down the road. “Shower in, shower out. The researchers who enter the facility gown as if they were entering a surgical operating room,” Phil explains. “The air that enters the facility is sterile-filtered. Anything that could interfere with the health of the pigs is excluded.”
Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica’s (BIVI) new livestock vaccine research facility in Sioux Center, Iowa meets the company’s vision of Value Through Innovation, or VTI, according to Dr. Edward Robb, vice president of research and development for BIVI.
“The facility really allows us to test novel vaccine concepts to really see if these ideas can have an impact on the welfare of pigs and cattle,” he said. “To do and fund innovative research you have to work on ideas that will really change the way we do things.”
Robb says the new facility is also a good fit with their other locations in Iowa and St. Joseph, Missouri.
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds both attended the dedication of a new Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (BIVI) livestock vaccine research facility in Sioux Center, Iowa on Wednesday. They are both pictured here with Dr. Phil Hayes of BIVI and Sioux Center Mayor Dennis Walstra at the symbolic ribbon cutting.
“The state is very proud to partner with a quality company like Boehringer Ingelheim,” said Governor Branstad. “We are an agricultural state and we’re proud to be an agricultural state. I was governor before back in the 80s when agriculture was going through what we called the farm crisis and agriculture was the weakest part of the economy – today it’s the strongest.”
I got to do a quick interview with the governor at the dedication where I also asked about his reaction to the Iowa Corn Cy-Hawk trophy settlement – which he is pleased with.
It is always a pleasure to cover the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (BIVI) Swine Health Seminar in North Carolina and see so many young swine producers with their families. Makes me optimistic about the future of agriculture.
The big barefoot kid in this photo surrounded by smaller kids is BIVI’s Dan “The Man” Johnson, who is organizer of this great annual event on the beach in North Carolina that combines just the right amount of work and play. The producers spend a day getting swine health and industry updates on Friday and then get family activity time on Saturday. “We want to be more than a vendor to our customers,” Dan says. “We know that their families are important to our producers, so they are important to us as well.”
This year’s meeting had a pirate theme and concluded with a really fun and funny pirate magic show put on by No Sleeves Magic. It was great fun and the photos are proof!
At the BIVI Swine Health Seminar in North Carolina last week, Dr. Greg Cline gave an update on the acceptance of the 3-way vaccine to combat Porcine Circovirus, Mycoplasma Hyopneumoniae AND PRRS. “The acceptance and reaction has been phenomenal,” Greg says. “It delivers in a lot of areas and we look for the acceptance to continue to accelerate as time goes by.”
The 3FLEX product is the first 3-way combination approved by the USDA to be mixed and administered as a single shot for pigs three weeks of age or older, combining BIVI’s Ingelvac CircoFLEX® 1, Ingelvac MycoFLEX® 2 and Ingelvac® PRRS MLV 3 in one 2 mL shot. “it was a vision by Boehringer-Ingelheim’s a very convenient vaccine in a one-dose, small dose delivery and have it still be convenient, safe and effective,” Greg said, calling it a winning team for hog producers. Chuck interviewed Greg last September when 3FLEX was first introduced.
New results from a trial done in Minnesota show that the PRRS modified live virus vaccine appears to reduce viral shedding.
The trial results were presented at last week’s Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Swine Health Seminar in North Carolina by Dr. Joel Nerem of Pipestone Vet Clinic. “What we found was that vaccinated pigs shed virus for fewer days and for a shorter duration of time than the vaccinated control pigs,” he said.
Why is that important in the fight against Porcine Reproductive & Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS)? “It is important when we are working on maintaining a high health status for a particular region,” Joel explained. “One of the things our group is looking at, is in the control of PRRS, can we establish regions that are free of the virus and what technologies can we utilize to maintain those PRRS-free regions?”
The Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Swine Health Seminar in North Carolina offered updates in two important swine health areas – mycoplasma hyopneumoniae and PRRS.
Dr. Erin Strait with Iowa State University talked about getting the most out of diagnostics for M. hyopneumoniae. “The biggest issue I usually see is over-interpretation of diagnostics and not understanding that those diagnostics are often skewed towards false negative,” she said. “Mycoplasma hyopneumonia in live pigs can be pretty hard to detect and the diagnostics tend to be a lagging indicator. Determining prevalence in the nursery stage can be very challenging.”
Dr. Rick Tubbs with Green River Swine Consultants is a practicing vet who serves Tosh Farms, a family-owned hog operation in Tennessee. He presented information on the impact of the modified live PRRS virus vaccine for control of PRRS in an endemically infected continuous flow finish site. He described how they ended up with a PCV2 problem which they dealt with by depopulating finisher sites, moving to a wean-to-finish operation, changing wean age and vaccinating all pigs for PCV2.
“This particular virus disease is a constantly evolving challenge and we have to adapt to meet the challenge,” Rick says. “The PCV2 vaccine is a wonderful product. It’s been one of those home runs in the industry.”
“Hog Economics in the Biofuels Era” was the topic of a presentation by Purdue University economist Dr. Chris Hurt at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Swine Health Seminar in North Carolina.
Dr. Hurt says government policies like biofuels and even food stamps were built upon a “psychology of surplus” to increase prices. “We continue to see a psychology of surplus in our policy from Washington, when it turns out we are in a period of shortage of basic food ingredients,” he said.
Hurt says that corn for ethanol has been a demand shock for the market since 2005, but another big demand shock has been soybeans to China. “If you put it on acres of land, back in 2005 we were using about 16 million acres for those two demands,” he said. “By the time we got to the 2010 crop, that was 46 million acres – almost a tripling of the acreage.”
The hog industry has finally reduced herds enough to adjust to the higher feed prices, which has increased consumer prices for pork and that has led to stagnated growth for domestic consumption. However, Hurt says exports are increasing tremendously and now make up 20% of production, with big demand coming from Mexico and China in particular.
Nobody talks common sense about animal welfare better than Dr. Temple Grandin of Colorado State University.
If you are in the livestock industry, unless you live in a cave, you have heard of Dr. Grandin. In fact, a decent portion of the general public now knows this amazing woman, thanks to the HBO movie starring Claire Danes which celebrates Temple’s triumph over autism. That movie and her best-selling books have allowed her to get out and talk to the general public about animal welfare issues, something she considers to be very important for the livestock industry to do.
Temple spoke this morning to the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Swine Health Seminar in North Carolina. One of her suggestions about handling pigs humanely and effectively is to walk the pens. “Pigs are visual animals,” she explains. “Walk the pens and teach them to follow you.”
Controlling enteric diseases caused by ileitis and Salmonella can help both keep food safe and pork producer profits growing. “Enteric diseases are sometimes below the threshold of detection,” said Kent Schwartz, DVM with Iowa State University. “Feed is the largest input into the cost of production and anything that comprises intestinal function has a propensity to cost money and among many other factors are infectious diseases.”
Dr. Schwartz recommends that producers keep good records on animals and determine whether they are achieving their potential. “Lawsonia and Salmonella are very common infections,” he said. “These agents can cause disease that are not necessarily visual but can impact feed to gain and we do have for those two agents very effective vaccines that can take them out of the equation.”
Listen to or download an interview with Dr. Schwartz here: Dr. Kent Schwartz
Since control of Salmonella is a food safety concern, BIVI senior veterinarian John Kolb says it is is something producers can and should address. “Salmonella’s always going to be there,” he said. “One more thing that we can do to reduce the amount of Salmonella in the pig itself, is use vaccination.”
Dr. Kolb recommends producers get their vet involved and determine when exposure to Salmonella starts and make sure the vaccine gets in ahead of it.
“Value through Innovation” is the theme for Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (BIVI) at the World Pork Expo this year and the company is proud of its commitment to helping pork producers.
I stopped by the BIVI exhibit at the trade show yesterday and talked with Tim Bettington (right), executive director of the company’s swine division and Randy Buller (left), senior associate director for the division.
“BI is very committed to the swine industry,” Tim told me. “We have several other species under our umbrella but the swine industry is the key one for us. We’ve grown up as a swine organization and globally swine is the number one sales driver for us.” Tim says they are in the process of completing an R&D facility in Germany that will complement the facility they have in Ames, Iowa that has been very successful in developing the company’s PRRS vaccine.
Randy says there is a great deal of interest among producers in the 3FLEX vaccine they introduced just last year. “It is the only product in the swine industry that mixes three vaccines in a similar platform,” said Randy. The 3FLEX consists of three vaccines: Ingelvac CircoFLEX®, Ingelvac MycoFLEX® and Ingelvac® PRRS MLV to address circa virus, mycoplasma, and PRRS in one shot.
In this week's program Chuck talks with Mike Adams, AgriTalk.
Chuck and Mike often wind up at the same events all over the country so it seemed like a good idea to do a little AgriTalking about the changes they've seen in the ag media landscape.
Sold! To Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc. (BIVI) the platinum level sponsorship for this year’s Livestock Marketing Association 2012 World Livestock Auctioneer Championship (WLAC).
“We realized that the livestock auction market owner has a key role in the value that producers capture for the cattle they sell and has a significant influence on the health protocols that producers follow,” BIVI Brand Manager Monica Porter said. “We want to partner with LMA members to help educate cattle producers on ways to improve their end product through flexible health programs, like our Range Ready Quality Feeder Calf program.”
It may not look like much on the outside, but the new 
To keep the research pigs healthy, Phil says there is very limited access – which is why the dedication ceremony this week was held at the Ridge Golf Clubhouse down the road. “Shower in, shower out. The researchers who enter the facility gown as if they were entering a surgical operating room,” Phil explains. “The air that enters the facility is sterile-filtered. Anything that could interfere with the health of the pigs is excluded.”
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds both attended the dedication of a new 
It is always a pleasure to cover the 
It has been o
New results from a trial done in Minnesota show that the PRRS modified live virus vaccine appears to reduce viral shedding. 
The 
Dr. Rick Tubbs with Green River Swine Consultants is a practicing vet who serves Tosh Farms, a family-owned hog operation in Tennessee. He presented information on the impact of the modified live PRRS virus vaccine for control of PRRS in an endemically infected continuous flow finish site. He described how they ended up with a PCV2 problem which they dealt with by depopulating finisher sites, moving to a wean-to-finish operation, changing wean age and vaccinating all pigs for PCV2.
“Hog Economics in the Biofuels Era” was the topic of a presentation by Purdue University economist Dr. Chris Hurt at the 
Nobody talks common sense about animal welfare better than Dr. Temple Grandin of Colorado State University.
Temple spoke this morning to the 
Controlling enteric diseases caused by ileitis and Salmonella can help both keep food safe and pork producer profits growing. “Enteric diseases are sometimes below the threshold of detection,” said Kent Schwartz, DVM with Iowa State University. “Feed is the largest input into the cost of production and anything that comprises intestinal function has a propensity to cost money and among many other factors are infectious diseases.”
Since control of Salmonella is a food safety concern, BIVI senior veterinarian John Kolb says it is is something producers can and should address. “Salmonella’s always going to be there,” he said. “One more thing that we can do to reduce the amount of Salmonella in the pig itself, is use vaccination.”
“Value through Innovation” is the theme for 
In this week's program Chuck talks with Mike Adams, AgriTalk.
