Temperatures Within a Truck Transporting Pigs During Winter and Summer Months in Western Canada
Transportation, which is an unfamiliar to the pig – is one of the most critical periods in pig handling before slaughter. It possibly involves economic losses due to deaths, ‘suspect’ animals on arrival at the processing plant, and reduced meat quality. Losses are...
Can Trailer Design Effectively Reduce Disease Transmission?
In response to an industry need for a livestock vehicle that addresses both increased animal welfare and biosecurity during transport, a prototype air-filtered trailer was designed and assembled. The project set out to select the best possible option for a...
Interaction of Dietary Energy and Phytase on Performance of Weanling Pigs
Approximately 60 to 80% of the phosphorus (P) in cereal grains and oil seeds is bound to phytate and unavailable to monograstics, including swine. Supplementing swine diets with the phytase enzyme improves P availability and retention. The phytate molecule complexes other minerals, proteins, and...
Impact of Prod Use on Highly Stressed Pigs
Pigs were subjected to three different handling treatments as we moved them through a 300m handling course. Despite traveling the same distance as the others, pigs moved at a moderate pace with only a board, quiet voice and gentle slaps, were essentially unstressed by...
Engineering Controls Reduce Hydrogen Sulphide Exposure in Swine Barns
Three engineering control measures were developed and tested for effectiveness in protecting swine barn workers from exposure to hydrogen sulfide (H2S) gas during manure handling events. A remote manure pit plug pulling system allowed the worker to pull the manure pit plug from outside the...
Response of Growing-Finishing Pigs to Dietary Energy Concentration
In this trial, feeding lower energy, lower cost diets had no effect on ADG or on loin thickness, but did improve feed efficiency, and reduced backfat thickness. This indicates that lower energy diets may be used to increase net income. This experiment was...
Effectively Assessing Technology
New technologies are constantly being introduced into barns due to promised benefits and enhanced profitability. However, these innovations can also introduce new challenges and costs, such as the impact of new technologies on worker health and safety. So how do...
Precision Feeding for Gestating Sows
The objective of this project was to assess the impact of an individualized feeding strategy for pregnant sows whose dietary intakes vary depending on stage of gestation and the individual characteristics of the sow, on growth performances, productivity and feed...
Use of Novel Technologies to Optimize Pig Performance
The overall project is assessing several novel technologies which can help producers to monitor health, welfare and feed efficiency while also offering tools to predict and enhance carcass value. There are also technologies for packers to better evaluate carcass and...
The Effects of Water Availability and Space Allowance on Productivity and Profitability
Reduced floor space allowance for pigs may negatively affect growth performance as a result of competition for feed and water access, especially at later stages of the grower-finisher period. However, kilograms of pork produced per unit of floor space may increase with more pigs...
The Interaction Between Pig Density and Dietary Energy on Performance
Dietary net energy and stocking density independently affect performance, feed utilization and profits in the finisher barn. The objective of this experiment was to assess the interactions of stocking density and dietary energy, and determine how these interactions affect net income. When stocking density...
