After the depopulation-repopulation of his sow herd in 2003, Iowa pork producer Robert Dircks was among the naysayers who didn’t see how segregating where employees worked in his 1,000-sow, farrow-to-finish operation made much sense.
“I didn’t like it that I couldn’t just walk into the west barn of the finisher site anytime I wanted to, because I loved to just show up!” he says.
Declares manager Douglas Hoffman: “We had to teach everybody and ourselves that everybody was at risk. That was one of the biggest changes in this operation — that we just didn’t come to work; we had to come to work with a purpose and an understanding of where we’ve always been so we didn’t bring something into the herd.”
Biosecurity changes included:
The sow farm was closed to traffic or visitors and restricted to visiting the office with approval.
Facilities became shower-in, shower-out.
For every group of incoming gilts, half the group gets blood tested twice for porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).
Constant vet-to-vet communication updates the disease status of the gilt source.
Maintenance workers coming into the farm use farm tools only and must have been away from other pigs for at least 48 hours.
All products coming into units are sprayed with Synergize disinfectant (Preserve International).
Vendors are limited and must meet farm staff at an off-site office.
All feed is grown and mixed for sows by farm staff, and trucks are dedicated “for feed use only.”
Rodent bait stations at the sow farm get high priority and are monitored every three weeks by staff.
All pig trailers are washed and disinfected between loads.
Cull sows are loaded off-site.
A steel in-vessel composter called the BIOvator (Nioex Systems, Inc.) is used to naturally compost pig mortalities.
Manure is all custom-hauled from Dircks Farms. “We used to let commercial haulers use their own pumps, but now we use our pumps and just hook their hoses up to the pump-out port,” Dircks says.
