AgWired

Livestock producers could take a cue from their crop brethren and adopt some precision technology to be more efficient.

That advice comes from ag economist and swine industry specialist Dennis DiPietre, who spoke at the Boehringer Ingelheim swine health seminar in North Carolina on Friday. “It’s a really interesting road map what has been going on with precision agriculture techniques,” Dennis says. “Farmer who have adopted this technology can see variations in their field easily and adjust the production process while it is still in progress.”

“In livestock production, we don’t have the technology today to really get a good look at the variation happening within growing livestock,” he continues. However, he believes the key to profitability for the livestock industry is measuring and controlling variance, “to be able to reduce the variability of the outcome of the animal.”

BIVI swine health seminar photo album

Listen to or download an interview with Dennis here:

Testing saliva for human diseases has been around for as long as a century, but it was only about a decade ago that someone thought it might work for livestock as well.

The swine industry is getting very close to being able to detect the presence of disease in a herd using a rope that pigs can chew on and leave their saliva for testing and that was the topic of two presentations Friday at the Boehringer Ingelheim swine health seminar in North Carolina.

John Prickett with Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine has been studying oral fluid testing of swine for four years and he says the rope collection method works pretty well. “The pigs love it. They’re very inquisitive by nature, there’s not a lot for them to do and they are always looking for the ropes – they have fun with it,” he says.

They have data on testing for a variety of diseases and now the work is moving forward with assay development, which Dr. Jeff Zimmerman of Iowa State University says is the key to making oral fluid testing affordable. “Between 12 and 18 months from now, we are going to have antibody-based assays that are ready to go,” Zimmerman said. “And that’s going to be when we start getting the costs down.”

Zimmerman says disease control relies on good data and he says better data would have helped the industry get correct information about the H1N1 outbreak disseminated faster.

BIVI swine health seminar photo album

Listen to or download back-to-back interviews with John and Jeff here:

Swine producers need to carefully evaluate the costs of prevention versus treatment when it comes to disease in their herds.

“We need to try to categorize the different types of diseases, as to whether it has a real good type of treatment, a low cost type of treatment, or maybe a high cost animal health problem if we do get it in the herd, and then start making animal health management decisions based on that,” said Iowa State University ag economist Dr. Jim Kliebenstein at the Boehringer Ingelheim swine health seminar in North Carolina on Friday.

One point he made is that “total prevention” of any disease is probably unaffordable. “Maybe getting it to where there’s only a ten percent chance or a five percent chance, but once we get above that, the costs of going to even greater lengths far exceed the benefits,” he said.

Kliebenstein presented the economic impact of swine disease, especially PRRS, both from a personal level and on an average per producer and for the industry. He was a partner in a gilt multiplier herd when they had an outbreak of PRRS that caused them to lose their contract. “We lost a significant number of dollars,” he related. “We had gilts that were on the books at $250 because we had a production contract. Overnight, they went to $50 or less.”

Overall, Kleibenstein estimates the annual cost of just PRRS to the U.S. swine industry at $600-800 million a year and could increase to $1 billion if the disease incidence keeps growing. He strongly recommends that producers do their homework and determine what works best for their operations to control and prevent swine diseases.

BIVI swine health seminar photo album

Listen to or download an interview with Dr. Jim Kliebenstein here: