Posted by Dr. Steve Dudley on June 26 2009 14:26
- This is a common question in my line of work…and the answer is that it depends
- People make decisions differently and what one farm is willing to tolerate in prouction loss would cause other's to lose sleep at night.
- The ultimate answer to this question is dictated by what we would do with the information that we get from the diagnostics
Case Study
500 sow unit has been experiencing an increase in abortions and a moderate cough is going through the sow herd.
- There are a moderate number of sows that are off-feed
- Abortions have gone from % to %
- Piglet litters have been poorer as the cough has gradually gotten worse
- Intervention in this case would cost $
What changes would we have to see to make our diagnostics worth while?
- We would need to see a % decrease in pre-wean mortality
- We would need to see a decrease in abortions
- We would need to see a decrease in Days to market
- We would need to see a % decrease in open and returns
When should I chose to do diagnostics?
- To get an idea of the challenges that are facing your herd
- To know which diseases you should be on your toes to prevent
- To determine the facets of production that you can address through medication, vaccination, or management changes
What can I do with this information?
- We can use it to:
- make vaccine protocols
- make medication recommendations
- make isolation and acclimitization procedures for incoming animals
- make management recommendations to reduce the impacts of certain diseases
- make production decisions to increase profit