Friday, August 22, 2014

Preventing Disease On Hog Farms

By Lianne Derocco


Raising livestock, especially hogs, can be a challenging way to make a living. Keeping these animals clean and free from disease is paramount, and sometimes this seems like an all-consuming chore. However, there are some very simple ways to keep your animals from being exposed to harmful porcine diseases.

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.

Dealing with waste is a huge part of livestock farming, and there are a few safe and natural products that can help you maintain deep pit systems, lagoon waste systems and pull plug systems. These products contain no chemicals and also are approved by veterinarians. This is a highly important option when you are raising healthy livestock.

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.

For those who have a waste lagoon, there is a another similar product, the AgraSphreLGT. Like the AgraSphere, this product uses natural bacteria to maintain and treat waste, and this product also improves the nutrient levels in manure, which can be a benefit to crops. This lagoon waste product will treat up to 400,000 gallons of waste for up to a month, and again, all you need to do is to regularly add a new product to keep problems at bay.




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