Animal Well-being
Weaning sows directly into group housing: Effects on aggression, physiology and productivity
July 15, 2015By Jennifer Brown
In the management of group housed sows, keeping sows in stalls from weaning until five weeks after breeding is a common strategy that serves to prevent aggression, control individual feed intake...
Pork Safety - Pre-Harvest
A study to assess the tissue residue depletion profile of ampicillin in cull sows and its association with plasma, oral fluid and urine ampicillin concentrations
July 15, 2015By Hans Coetzee
The use of more stringent penicillin detection methods in edible tissues at processing and a zero tolerance for the presence of detectable residues in some territories has resulted in an...
Environment - Environmental Footprint
A Life Cycle Analysis of Land Use in US Pork Production
July 12, 2015By Greg Thoma
The goal of this study was to analyze land use in the production of US pork using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). LCA is a comprehensive methodology for quantitatively analyzing potential...
Public Health - MRSA
Alternatives to antibiotics? Effects on MRSA prevalence in swine production systems
July 9, 2015By H. Morgan Scott
Antimicrobial resistant bacteria in animal products are of major public health concern. The concerns about prudent use of antimicrobials have largely focused on feed grade antibiotic products...
Swine Health - General Disease
Evaluation of two novel live attenuated swine influenza vaccines against newly emerging H3N2 virus infection and transmission
July 7, 2015By Yan Zhou
After the 2009 pandemic, variant H3N2 swine influenza viruses (H3N2v SIV) carrying genes from pandemic H1N1 emerged in pig farms. The objective of this study is to investigate whether the two live...
Animal Science - Swine Nutrition
Enhancing feed utilization and nutrient digestibility through management of particle size and feed processing options
July 6, 2015By John Patience
The overall goal for this experiment was to determine the impact of average particle size of corn, wheat and corn DDGS with two different grinding technologies on the digestion of energy and...
Animal Science - Swine Nutrition
Evaluating the use of long-term conditioning or extrusion to extract nutrients from low energy feedstuffs
June 30, 2015By Cassandra Jones
A shift in three major issues affecting feed manufacturing for pork production has occurred simultaneously in recent years. First, high...
Animal Science - Sow Lifetime Productivity
Optimal dietary protein for the development of gilts. NPB #15-119 (14-235-Year2)
June 29, 2015By Jeffrey Vallet
This experiment was undertaken to develop diets that could be fed ad libitum to developing gilts that would result in differences in growth rate or body composition during development. A further...
PEDV Diagnostic Approaches to Assess Sow Immunity and Piglet Protection
June 24, 2015By Eric A. Nelson
Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) was first detected in the U.S. in May 2013 and spread rapidly across the country. PCR assays were quickly developed to detect the presence of PEDV RNA in...
Animal Well-being
Development of a practical, cost-effective pain mitigation technique for castration of piglets
June 17, 2015By Erin Fierheller
There is a growing trend towards the development of “welfare-friendly” management practices in production animals....
