When pigs are introduced to newly constructed buildings, or into facilities that have not housed pigs for some time, the disease pressure from even these ubiquitous bugs is less. This period of enhanced performance is often called the “honeymoon period.”

Pathogen challenge can also be managed through an effective, ongoing high hygiene program.

Health Variance is Broad

Across the industry, between systems, sites and groups, there remains wide variation in health status.

Herd health management strategies, such as depopulation/repopulation programs, segregated early weaning programs, parity segregation programs and all-in, all-out production have been an immense help in keeping production systems running efficiently.

In the last two decades, the swine industry has also benefitted from the use of many new tools for prevention and treatment of diseases that have allowed us to upgrade the health status of existing populations.

Disease elimination strategies have become commonplace. Some diseases that were once devastating, such as the pathogenic strains of Actinobacillus pleuropneumonia (APP), have been eliminated. Similar strategies have been used for the elimination of progressive atrophic rhinitis, Mycoplasmal pneumonia, swine dysentery, and mange and lice.

In addition, we've seen dramatic changes to genetics (leanness, market weights); nutrition and environmental management; weaning age; pig flows; group size and stocking density; biosecurity practices; refined diagnostic tests; targeted vaccines; and the judicious use of antibiotics.

Of course, the really big differences from two decades ago are in the diseases that we fight. Although some disease names have merely changed (such as APP), others are totally new, such as PRRS, PCVAD (Porcine Circovirus-Associated Disease) and PCV2.

Disease Drains Performance

Disease affects average daily gain, feed conversion, days to market and the number of culls or under-valued pigs. While none of these performance parameters are singly indicative of health, together they may indicate a health challenge exists — even when mortality is low.

Industry standards, targets and benchmarks provide a good place to begin a comparison, but they do not take into account differences or idiosyncrasies of a particular farm or system. Farm-specific records are necessary to begin to understand and analyze the effects of disease and the value of health to each farm or site.

Good farm records are necessary to begin to tease apart differences between groups of pigs, caretakers, sites, seasons, genetics and so on. Without good production records, guessing and supposition become the drivers of our decision-making, which make it impossible to know if a suspected problem is real and whether any intervention strategy will be beneficial.

Top Health Opportunities

If herd health is the trump card for winning the production game, there are some tools that will help stack the deck in your favor. Following is a list of ideas and concepts that are available to nearly every farm. Some are simple and easy to adopt, while others may require substantial investment. All have been used in some manner to increase throughput, reduce variation and improve overall productivity.

• Implement benchmarking

  Benchmarking is simply a tool for comparison. (See SMS Production Index above.) Benchmarking your production against other farms or systems can help identify areas of opportunity. It can also be a tool to use within a system or farm. Comparing various production parameters will allow strengths and weaknesses to surface and help focus resources to the areas of greatest needs.

  Benchmarking is not limited to use with health-related measurements, but it can help identify health issues affecting production.