Turnover events of animal caretakers and its impact on productivity in swine farms

Changes in piglet and litter characteristics across parities in two highly prolific sow hybrids in an outdoor organic herd

High piglet mortality constitutes a welfare challenge in organic pig production. Litter characteristics were investigated from parities 1-5 of two hyper-prolific hybrids with different selection traits in an organic commercial herd (DanBred vs. Topigs Norsvin [TN70]). TN70 sows had more functional teats than DanBred sows, and their offspring had higher birth weights. Several interactions between hybrid and parity were found. The total born increased with higher parity and was more pronounced for DanBred sows. Litter weight at weaning was higher in parities 1-4 for TN70 compared with DanBred, and within DanBred parities 4 and 5 had higher litter weight at weaning than parity 1. The survival rate was higher for TN70 in parities 1 and 2 compared with DanBred, and for both hybrids, the survival rate was higher in parities 1 and 2 compared with parities 4 and 5. The number of weaned piglets was stable across parities 1-4 but lower in parity 5 for both hybrids. Thus, despite a lower number of total born piglets in TN70, TN70 sows weaned the same number of piglets as DanBred, with a lower mortality rate and a heavier litter at weaning.

Characterizing the connection between swine production sites by personnel movements using a mobile application-based geofencing platform

Biosecurity is critical to productivity and profitability in swine production systems and can be achieved by incorporating external (bioexclusion) and internal (biocontainment) practices. Although increasing threats of foreign animal diseases have justified the need of rigorous external biosecurity plans, their effectiveness highly depend on the compliance of on-farm employees, farm-related personnel, and visitors. In this study, we evaluated the uses of a mobile application-based geofencing platform in two swine production systems for accurately identifying personnel movements between swine production sites and detecting potential biosecurity breaches by violating required downtime between site visits. The geofencing platform accurately recognized 95.2% (379/398) of personnel entries comparing to physical entry logs. Further, among 1861 entries over a period of one month, 19 strongly connected components and 12 potential biosecurity breaches were identified. Personnel with duty in communications and information systems committed 75% of biosecurity breaches. The results reported herein demonstrated the possible uses of geofencing platforms for investigating connections among swine production sites by personnel movements and identifying biosecurity breaches.