He told other swine vets at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (BIVI) Swine Health Seminar in Denver last week about a study they did on the economic costs of different combinations of Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae, PRRS, and swine influenza virus (SIV). “We found that when you had a combination of PRRS and Mycoplasma, PRRS and SIV, that the production costs in the form of average daily gain, culls and mortality, was a lot higher than either antigen alone,” he said.

As a result, Dr. Painter said that preventative measures such as vaccinations for those pathogens proved to be well worth the investment. “The result that you get from Mycoplasma negative pigs is excellent return,” he said. “Also, it’s clear that if you vaccinate a pig three weeks before they’re exposed to the PRRS virus, that the cost of the mortality and culls is substantially less.”

Listen to my interview with Dr. Painter here: Dr. Tom Painter with Cargill Pork

BIVI Summit at Mile High 2012 photo album

That expansion has brought with it both opportunities and challenges for producers, according to Iowa State University Professor of Animal Science Dr. John Patience, who spoke to swine veterinarians last week at the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (BIVI) Swine Health Seminar in Denver. “Corn and soybean meal are relatively uniform ingredients. Now that we’ve moved to using products like wheat middlings, bakery by-products, and distillers grains, those are ingredients that are quite variable in their nutrient composition. So, we have to do a lot more quality control, for example,” he explained. “We also have to make sure when we use these ingredients that they fit into our feed manufacturing system since some of them are a lot less dense, bulk-wise.”

Dr. Patience says we are seeing diets now with 20% or less corn in them. “Right now the Europeans have a lot more experience with using these diverse kinds of diets than we do, but we’re catching up,” he said, adding that the U.S. pork industry is extremely innovative and responsive to new information “and that has really shown itself remarkably well in the last five years.”

Listen to my interview with Dr. Patience here: ISU Animal Scientist Dr. John Patience

BIVI Summit at Mile High 2012 photo album

At the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (BIVI) Swine Health Seminar in Denver, Dr. Steve Pollmann, President of Western Operations for Murphy-Brown, LLC shared some of his thoughts on dealing with high feed costs in commercial pig production. “We’re the live production part of Smithfield Foods,” he said. “We have about 850,000 sows located in 12 different states and we produce about 17 million pigs.

That’s a lot of pigs to feed, so when feed costs go up, the cost of production can increase dramatically. “We all know that feed is the biggest single cost of production,” Steve said. “A 25 cent change in corn price per bushel, with that comes a $20 change in soybean price, all of the sudden you’ve got a $1.60 a hundredweight cost of production (increase).” He says the higher feed costs in the last five years or so have meant feed as a percentage of total production costs has risen from 60% to 70%.

Like all pork producers, Murphy-Brown has had to adjust to the higher feed costs by becoming more efficient. “When things get that kind of difficult, you’ve got to get better and if you don’t, you die,” he said.

Listen to my interview with Dr. Pollmann here: Dr. Steve Pollman, Murphy-Brown

BIVI Summit at Mile High 2012 photo album

Dr. Hurt spoke to swine veterinarians on the topic of “Global Feed Economics in a Biofuel World” during the Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica (BIVI) Swine Health Seminar in Denver on Friday.

“This is an amazing difference from just five years ago,” Dr. Hurt said about the hog industry’s adjustment to higher corn prices. “The hog industry was largely set up with $2-2.50 corn going into 2006. After that we saw major increases in those corn prices.”

Hog producers initially absorbed those higher costs by reducing margins, which meant big losses and ultimately resulted in reduced supplies. “You reduce the supply enough, you bring those hog prices up. That’s where we are today. Hog producers can pay $6-7 for corn with the prices they’re getting for hogs,” he said. “That up to $7 is higher than ethanol plants can pay for corn and still cover all their costs.”

Dr. Hurt talked about the demand drivers for both corn and soybeans that are causing increased acreage globally and how he expects feed prices to moderate in the next several years. “That brings us back to more like in the $5-5.50 corn range.”

Listen to my interview with Dr. Hurt here: Dr. Chris Hurt

BIVI Summit at Mile High 2012 photo album

The first part of the seminar is focused on higher feed costs and right now attendees are hearing about “Global Feed Economics in a Biofuel World” from Dr. Chris Hurt, Purdue University Professor of Agricultural Economics. After Dr. Hurt, Dr. Steve Pollmann of Murphy-Brown will talk about how to deal with the high cost of feed in commercial pig production.

Dr. John Patience, Iowa State University Professor of Animal Science, will discuss the challenges and opportunities of expanding the base of dietary ingredients for swine. Finally, Dr. Tom Painter, Cargill Pork Director Veterinary Health Services, will answer the question, What does it cost to have multiple pathogens in your flow?

Topping off the seminar will be an evening of dinner and entertainment at Sports Authority Field at Mile High.

I’ll be interviewing all the presenters about what they had to say and bringing you that information over the next few days. Meanwhile, the BIVI Summit at Mile High 2012 photo album is already live for your viewing pleasure.

Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc. (BIVI) has signed a letter of intent to develop a business plan for partnering with the Furniture Row Racing NASCAR team’s Farm American program for the 2013 season. David Korbelik with BIVI’s Cattle Division is pictured here (left center) with South Dakota cattle producers Stacy and Troy Hadrick (left and right) and Pat Driscoll of Furniture Row Racing.

“There has never been a better time to show support for American Agriculture. It is a strong, vibrant business that consumers need to know more about – that’s why we’re so honored to work with Furniture Row Racing to develop a plan on becoming a Farm American partner in 2013,” said BIVI Cattle Division executive director Colin Meyers. BIVI’s cattle division introduced a new way of thinking this year called Prevention Works and Meyers says the partnership with Farm American enhances this industry commitment.

Furniture Row Racing created the Farm American program in 2010, an initiative to bring awareness to the importance of keeping America’s food supply produced in the United States. “We are thrilled that a world-class company like Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc. has shown an interest in becoming a 2013 partner with our Farm American program, which continues to attract attention in the agriculture community,” said Joe Garone, general manager of Furniture Row racing.

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.

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.

You can listen to my interview with Reid here: Reid Phillips Interview

2011 Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS ARC&E Seminar Photo Album

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.

You can listen to my interview with Jim here: Dr. Jim Branstad Interview

2011 Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS ARC&E Seminar Photo Album

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.

You can listen to my interview with Jim here: Jim Lowe Interview

2011 Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS ARC&E Seminar Photo Album

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!

You can listen to my interview with Derold here: Dr. Derold Holtkamp Interview

2011 Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS ARC&E Seminar Photo Album

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.

You can listen to my interview with Tim here: Dr. Tim Loula Interview

2011 Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS ARC&E Seminar Photo Album

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.

You can listen to my interview with Laura here: Dr. Laura Batista Interview

2011 Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS ARC&E Seminar Photo Album

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.

You can listen to my interview with Noel here: Dr. Noel Garbes Interview

2011 Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS ARC&E Seminar Photo Album

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!

So, here’s where you can find photos from this event: 2011 Boehringer Ingelheim PRRS ARC&E Seminar Photo Album

“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.”

Listen to my interview with Phil Hayes here. Dr. Phil Hayes at BIVI research facility dedication

BIVI Sioux Center Facility Dedication Photos

“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.

Listen to my interview with Dr. Robb here. Dr. Edward Robb at BIVI research facility dedication

BIVI Sioux Center Facility Dedication Photos

“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.

Listen to my interview with Governor Branstad here. Governor Terry Branstad at BIVI research facility dedication

Watch the ribbon cutting below and see photos from the dedication here.

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!

BIVI Swine Health Seminar Photo Album

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.

Listen to my interview with Greg here: Dr. Greg Cline at BIVI Swine Health Seminar

BIVI Swine Health Seminar Photo Album

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?”

Listen to my interview with Joel here: Dr. Joel Nerem at BIVI Swine Health Seminar

BIVI Swine Health Seminar Photo Album

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.”

Listen to my interview with Erin here: Dr. Erin Strait at BIVI Swine Health Seminar

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.”

Listen to my interview with Rick here: Dr. Rick Tubbs at BIVI Swine Health Seminar

BIVI Swine Health Seminar Photo Album

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.

Listen to my interview with Dr. Hurt here: Dr. Chris Hurt at BIVI Swine Health Seminar

BIVI Swine Health Seminar Photo Album

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.”

Dr. Grandin has a new book on animal welfare for the industry, called “Improving Animal Welfare: A Practical Approach.” Buy it on Amazon.

Listen to my interview with Dr. Grandin here: Dr. Temple Grandin at BIVI Swine Health Seminar

Check out photos from the BIVI Swine Health Seminar.

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.

Listen to or download an interview with Dr. Kolb here: John Kolb with BIVI

2011 World Pork Expo Photo Album

Randy Jones is located in Eastern North Carolina and practices in a very pig dense area and PRRS is the number one disease that he deals with. He said it is a very frustrating disease to deal with from a control perspective. I asked him about the cycle of PRRS and he said that his area had been dealing with it, then circa virus came along and overwhelmed PRRS and to some extent it was forgotten about. Then once a vaccine became available for circa virus and they were so effective in protecting the pig that now they’re back fighting the same diseases again such as PRRS.

Jones also noted that because viruses change and mutate they are hard to control so diagnostics is key. “The core of our program is diagnostics. You’ve got to do diagnostics to know what you’ve got, when you’ve got it. Because the timing makes all the difference in the in world in what type of control program you put in place.”

You can learn more about PRRS diagnostics in my full interview with Randy Jones here: Randy Jones Discusses The Role of Diagnostics in PRRS

Mike Eisenmenger practices in St. Peter, Minnesota but travels throughout the upper Midwest and like Jones, PRRS is the most prevalent disease he sees. He notes its a very smart virus and it stays one step ahead of the industry’s control programs. However, he believes that in general, they have been able to develop methods to manage sow farms where they’ve been able to consistently make negative pigs even though the sow farm would be considered positive for the virus.

Also, like Jones, Eisenmenger promotes consistent diagnostics strategies and he stresses that pigs need to be tested frequently, for example at least one a month. If the pigs are negative, then he suggests vaccinating them shortly after weaning them with the PRRS virus. Then after they are sent off to go live in the “real world” tissue samples can be done to test to see if they continue to be PRRS negative. Should a finishing site become infected with PRRS, Eisenmenger said there are strategies, such as antibiotics, that can be taken, to mitigate the problem. If not treated, pigs will become much more susceptible to other bacterial diseases.

You can learn more about PRRS diagnostics, and control and mitigation strategies in my full interview with Mike Eisenmenger here: Mike Eisenmenger Discusses All Things PRRS

Check out the 2011 BIVI Swine Health Seminar Photo Album.

What happens when a pig gets a flu? Gillespie explained that the flu virus is very similar to what happens in people. In 1918 the classic H1N1 flu strain caused a lot of death in humans. It was thought for many, many years that the virus jumped from pigs to humans and infected them at that time. What we know today is that humans, more than not, affect the hog units. So we have biosecurity programs in place. “That’s been the biggest change in the past three years in how we’re looking at influenza,” said Gillespie.

Flu symptoms in pigs are similar to those in humans but don’t usually last more than 3 or 4 days. I asked Gillespie how to diagnose if your pig has the flu. He said that you can do nasal swabs. Once you’ve determined that the flu is in fact what your pig is suffering from, then you treat the secondary bacterial infections. From there, you go into a preventative type program where you determine if there are any commercial products available to help. He noted that these are now becoming multi-strain so they provide better cross protection.

You can learn more about what to do if your pig gets the flu in my full interview with Tom here: Tom Gillespie Discusses Treatment For The Flu

Check out the 2011 BIVI Swine Health Seminar Photo Album.