PRRS 1-4-4 Variant Shows More Dramatic Impacts than Other PRRS Viruses

A swine practitioner with Swine Vet Center says the PRRS 1-4-4 variant has had a much more dramatic impact than any other PRRS viruses in terms of the numbers of abortion and sow mortalities. The PRRS 1-4-4 Lineage 1C variant was the focus of a Swine Health Information Center-American Association of Swine Veterinarians webinar Tuesday.

Dr. Paul Yeske, a swine practitioner with Swine Vet Center in St. Peter Minnesota, observes this virus hasn't done anything that hasn't been seen with PRRS before but this one is the most dramatic.

Clip-Dr. Paul Yeske-Swine Vet Center:

The sows go off feed very rapidly. It tends to move through the site very quickly. You'll go from 20 to 200 to every day being another 200 sows off feed. It depends on how big the herd is of course on how many you're going to see but it does move very rapidly through the barn. The abortions start about the same time the animals go off feed and they start going up very rapidly.

We've seen anywhere from four to seven weeks of production essentially aborted out and sow mortality is going anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of the sows dying off and very rapidly, within a two-to-three-week period of time. Also, high piglet mortality in the farrowing house, both the piglets on the ground at the time you started seeing clinical signs as well as the piglets being born and a lot of mortality in the nursery on the pigs that being weaned out, from very extreme high numbers in the 50 up to 80 percent which I didn't think was possible.

But it certainly is with this one. Then some real slow growth in finishers. We had one site where we were recording some average daily gain. We saw pigs that were gaining at 2.4 pounds a day drop down to a pound, so certainly having some dramatic effects.