Thursday, August 28, 2014

Preventing Disease On Hog Farms

By Lianne Derocco


When you raise livestock for a living, preventing disease is one of your top concerns. There are many ways to limit or even eliminate the risks of illnesses among your hog population by taking some easy precautions. Consider the following preventative measures for keeping your livestock healthy and safe.

When you purchase new hogs, it is important to keep them isolated for at least three weeks, and this timeframe can be much longer if you have any suspicion that your hogs were exposed to any type of porcine-related illness. One way to avoid long isolation times is to purchase new animals from breeders with pristine reputations and little to no history of selling diseased livestock.

Another way to keep disease at bay is by restricting the access to your hogs. Workers need to maintain strict protocols throughout the farm. This includes changing clothing and shoes when going into different areas of your farm. In general, you need to ensure that as few workers as possible have access to your animals. This will prevent porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRSV) from spreading. This disease alone causes losses of more than $600 million per year in the porcine industry. You can further limit the spread of PRRSV by using an air filtration system. These systems are an added cost, but the cost of PRRSV is far higher.

Hogs produce a lot of waste and if this waste is not dealt with, it can lead to porcine diseases, as well as spreading diseases among your workers and the surrounding human population. There are some easy-to-use products that can maintain your lagoon, pull plug or deep pit system, and these items contain no harmful chemicals and also have been approved by veterinarians.

For deep pit systems, a product such as AgraSphere can be utilized. Each sphere will reduce the buildup of sludge, prevent crusting, and reduce both odors and flies. This product is safe, natural and biodegradable and is easy to use, requiring no mixing. Each of these spheres will work for 30 days, releasing proprietary microbial isolates.

For lagoons, there is a specially designed product known as the AgraSphereLGT. This biodegradable product also can be simply tossed into the lagoon and will treat up to 400,000 gallons of hog waste. In addition, the product also will enhance the nutrients in your manure, which can then be used to improve your crops.




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