Monday, August 25, 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 adding new livestock to your farm, be sure to keep them isolated for at least 21 days or longer if you suspect that an animal has been exposed to enzootic pneumonia or other serious illnesses. In addition, be sure to purchase animals from someone with an excellent reputation for breeding healthy animals.

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.

If you do have a deep pit waste system, you can try using biodegradable AgraSphere. These spheres are simply tossed into your system and begin working immediately using a patented system that releases natural microbial isolates 24 hours per day for up to 30 days. This product requires no mixing, and will prevent crusting, as well as reducing sludge, flies and even odors.

If you have a lagoon waste system, you could use another type of AgraSphere, the AgraSphereLGT. This product is also biodegradable and can treat and maintain 400,000 gallons of lagoon waste. In addition, the AgraSphere LGT also improves the nutrient value of your manure, which is an added crop benefit.




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