Improving Pig Survivability is an ongoing project encompassing research, education, and extension efforts aimed at reducing overall mortality in the U.S. commercial swine industry. Dr. Joel DeRouchey, professor of swine nutrition at Kansas State University, says the project is funded by the National Pork Board and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR).
“We have almost $2 million now in in-kind support by the swine production systems, genetic companies, equipment suppliers, and nutritional service groups that have donated their facilities or helped fund projects that have focused on pig livability. So, we’re able to multiply those producer dollar investments with the Pork Board and FFAR. We’ve been able to multiply that to really allow a wider expansion of projects done in commercial facilities to generate information for our swine producers.”
He said sow mortality remains one of the major challenges facing sow farms today — a metric that goes far beyond numbers on paper.
“Especially when we’re dealing with a live biological animal, there isn’t anybody that I have ever come across in animal agriculture that doesn’t have that caring heart and wants to do well for the animals. And so, when we look at improving livability, that just spans so many different emotions, as well as just the practical sense of we’re raising a biological animal, and we want them to thrive and be as successful as each individual animal can.”
Dr. DeRouchey said identifying training opportunities and shaping continuous improvement within the operation is key to improving livability.
“It’s really back to the basics, and we can train them in the skills that they need. Well, if that’s the case, then we really have to have, or if they don’t have an animal background, and we bring them into an animal career, we have to really start at the basics and continue to provide information on a daily basis about how to care for, how to manage the environment, and how to manage all the aspects that that animal lives in, so that they can be as successful when it comes to pig livability and then their ultimate productivity.”
Visit piglivability.org for informational podcasts, two economic decision tools, more than 60 cumulative, multilingual fact sheets, and informational videos, as well as nearly 40 peer-reviewed research publications.