Meanwhile, Haden points out the decrease in porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is contributing to the reduction in sow mortality, too. From 2011-2012, the PRRS incidence rate was 40%. In 2023-2024, the PRRS incidence rate was less than 20%.
“It is absolutely, hands-down, the best PRRS year we've had since we started tracking PRRS incidence,” she says.
As a sow farm manager, Annegers likes seeing the industry trend in the right direction but says there is still opportunity to improve.
“A big thing we're working on is focusing on what we can control,” Annegers says. “We can identify those girls that need to be treated earlier and get medication into them. We can select the highest quality gilts with good leg structure. We can keep sows in the right condition all the time. If we focus on what we can control, we’ll be a lot better off.”
Kuker says it’s harder for him to correlate the lower sow mortality rates with what he is seeing on the finishing side, but he does know he has been seeing healthier pigs in the last six to nine months.
“I'm getting better startups on my pigs,” he says. “I'm dealing with less respiratory issues. Of the flows that I see, we've had less instances of PRRS breaks from the sow farms and less lateral breaks in our area than what we dealt with a year ago.”
That increase in overall health of the wean pig and decreased incidence of lateral disease has been a nice change, he adds.
On the grow-finish side, Eckberg says average daily gain continues to surprise him. In Q3, finishing hogs averaged a 1.94 lb. average daily gain. Feed conversion was also improved at 2.76 for finishing hogs.
Kuker says they’ve experienced less severe E coli. breaks, which he attributes to using more biosecurity measures and different feed ingredients and different levels of zinc.
Here are a few other key points the experts discussed:
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