Mitigating Deterioration of Swine Facilities
On average, Canadian swine buildings are 20 – 30 years old; over the next few years, these buildings need renovations or may be replaced with new construction. This project set out to identify potential solutions applicable to Canadian conditions to mitigate the...
Effects of Enrichment Objects on Piglet Growth and Behaviour
The purpose of this study was to perform an initial evaluation of pigs’ preferences for several enrichment objects and examine their effects on piglet growth and welfare during the nursery period. Thirty litters were selected at farrowing and assigned to three treatments: enrichment provided post-weaning (EN),...
Science Helps Hogs to the Finish(ing) Line
By Geoff Geddes, for Swine Innovation Porc To succeed in pork production, you must consider a range of factors and how they interact, and dealing with low energy feed is a perfect example. Previous research has found that low, constant net energy (NE) diets for...
Practical Alternatives for Managing Castration Pain in Piglets
The objective of this project was to evaluate drugs and administration procedures to help identify effective and practical pain control strategies for piglets at castration across three different studies. Results indicate the analgesic, ketoprofen, has a positive effect on reducing pain following castration when given 30...
High Fibre Diets – Satiety in Sows and Offspring Growth Performance
Feeding high fiber diets to sows during gestation is reported to play a positive role in the swine industry both in terms of animal welfare (improved satiety in feed-restricted pregnant sows) and production (increased weaning weight) during the gestation-lactation period. This study was designed to determine...
Pretreatment of Feed Ingredients to Enhance Value
Grains are typically harvested at <15% moisture to maintain quality during storage. When harvested at >15%, artificial drying may be employed but this increases cost. Low-quality high-moisture grains may also be preserved by acidification. These experiments were conducted with the overall objective of determining whether the...
Group Sow Housing
The National Sow Housing Conversion Project (NSHCP) was a Canada-wide project with the purpose of providing group sow housing information to swine producers and industry partners. For more information please click on the image below.
Evaluating New Crop Grain
Density or bushel weight is commonly used to estimate grain quality. Bushel weight is easy, low-cost and fast, ADF and NDF are none of these. Research over the past 20 years, however, has been unable to demonstrate a good relationship between bushel weight and feeding quality of grains for...
Feeding Green to Save Green
Pork producers are always looking for new ways in which they can increase their efficiencies through reducing feed costs. Feeding coproducts from the fuel ethanol industry like distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) or from the wheat flour industry like millrun can...
Evaluation of a Prototype Air-Filtered Transport Trailer
In response to the need by the industry for a livestock vehicle that addresses increased animal welfare and biosecurity during transport, a prototype air-filtered trailer was developed. Design parameters were gathered from a stakeholders’ survey and initial design configuration options were narrowed down using computer simulation. The...
Interaction of Dietary Fibre and Immune Challenge on Threonine Requirements and Pig Robustness
Sub-clinical disease results in reduced growth and less efficient use of nutrients. With the elimination of in-feed antibiotics for growth promotion it is increasingly important to understand the interaction between nutrition and health and nutrient requirements during disease challenge events. This project set out to more...
Development of a Commercial Scale Air Treatment System
An air cleaning technology based on biotrickling filtration developed in previous phases of the project was scaled up and tested at the PSC swine grower-finisher facility. Results showed that the air treatment units were effective in reducing the levels of ammonia, dust, and odour...
