Pork producers are being encouraged to take advantage of the summer lull in disease transmission to take steps to enhance biosecurity.
SHIC Associate Director Dr. Lisa Becton says the good news is the past month has seen a reduction in several different diseases, including PRRS, PED and porcine delta coronavirus but conversely there has been an increase in Porcine Circovirus positive cases in sows, and an increase in Porcine circovirus 3 and Porcine circovirus 2.
In summer historically we do see a downward trend of many diseases but that should tell us that we can’t let our guard down because summer does bring other challenges for heat stressers and other different things that can take a toll on the animals and so we always need to asses what are different things that we can do to improve on biosecurity.
One thing that producers can assess is taking advantage of the warmer weather and do deep cleaning on the farm, whether that’s in barns in between turns, looking at the assessment of chutes and walkways, taking advantage of both sunlight and hot temperatures to help do some disease reduction.
When we assess other diseases such as PCV3, it’s always important to look at what are the different interventions that are being performed on sow herds and in our gilt management strategies that can help reduce some of the impact and even positive cases.
There was a PCV webinar that SHIC hosted earlier this year that can provide tips and ticks for managing PCV and the latest information on this virus.
~ Dr. Lisa Becton, Swine Health Information Center
Dr. Becton notes, when we look at PRRS, we see not only a reduction overall but also a reduction of positive cases in the wean to harvest category, however there are pockets of increased PRRS activity in certain states including South Dakota and Indiana.
