As anybody who has ever raised hogs knows, sometimes you lose some pigs. It’s a fact of life in the business, and while sometimes the reason for losses are obvious, many times you just don’t know and just write it off to things happen.
But what if you could find out more about why you lost that pig so you could avoid losing more. That’s where PIC‘s Necropsy Audits come in.
During the PIC seminar this past week in Danville, Indiana, Dr. Amanda Ness, a health assurance veterinarian with PIC, talked about how examining lost pigs can help prevent further losses.
“We go through and necropsy every single dead pig in a system for a specific period of time,” she said. Then, they take take all that information and put it in their database and come back with information and recommendations producers can discuss with their veterinarians. She says early pig care seems to be the biggest cause of pig loss.
She says this necropsy audit is just part of the overall PIC package that managers receive to better manage their herds. “It’s just another customer service we offer to try make our customers as profitable as possible.”
You can read more about the PIC system here. And you can hear my entire conversation with Amanda here:
OK, so it’s not exactly how I remember boot camp from my days in the Air Force, but our good friends at 
In between sessions, I caught up with Casey Neill, a PIC nutritionist who talked about reducing sow herd feed costs and nutrition programs that maximize performance. He told me that with today’s tight margins, no one can afford to spend too much without getting any more performance.
Dr. Bob Rowland with Kansas State University (left) and Dr. Max Rodibaugh (center), a swine practitioner from Indiana, were the last two speakers at the 
Her name is Dr. Montserrat Torremorell, but most people just call her Dr. Montse (mont-see). She is an international expert in swine health at the University of Minnesota, joining the College of Veterinary Medicine earlier this year as the Al Leman Chair in Swine Medicine. So, she definitely knows her stuff when it comes to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, better known as PRRS.
The largest integrated dairy producer in Jordan is Hamoudeh Group and the U.S. Grains Council Corn Mission team visited their largest facility northeast of Amman which houses about 4,000 cows. Before getting a tour we heard a presentation from Marwan Hawari, pictured center showing some grain test results to team members, at their feed mill. I’ll have a video clip from that location to post soon.
The National Poultry Company in Jordan is managed by Mousa Wakileh who met with the U.S. Grains Council Corn Mission team. Mousa would like to see more education of traders and producers in order to increase imports of corn from the U.S. He’s also predicting a 50 percent increase in poultry consumption per capita in Jordan over the next five years which would also increase demand for American feed grains. According to Mousa, America is the preferred supplier of corn in Jordan.
“BASF and the NAAA are each devoted to sustaining and improving the field of agricultural aviation,” said Jim Gaffney, BASF Technical Market Manager. “This scholarship presents an opportunity for us to work together to help foster scenarios in which new pilots are provided with a foundation for success in the field of aerial application.”