April 2023 - Strategy FINAL - Flipbook - Page 11
Health
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MHP elimination
by Dr. Emily McDowell
A producer in
northwest Iowa sources
pigs from a sow farm
out in South Dakota that is
Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae
(MHP) positive. MHP is a
bacterial respiratory disease
that you see in downstream
pigs but has a sow farm origin.
This bacteria can cost $5-8/
downstream pig due to losses
in gain and mortality specifically
in the mid-late finishing phase.
In addition, the medication use
in this downstream flow is also
high. These losses can be even
higher when you are located in
pig dense areas as respiratory
co-infections with influenza and
PRRSv elevate the challenges.
PIPESTONE has been doing
MHP eliminations on sow farms
for the last 5-6 years. The MHP
elimination process involves
(1) loading the farm with gilts,
(2) closing the farm to gilts/
gilt delivery disruption, and (3)
exposure of the entire population
to MHP. The MHP elimination can
be done for MHP only but, most
commonly, these eliminations
have been paired with PRRSv
eliminations as the timeline for
gilt disruption/herd closure are
similar. Our intial MHP elimination
success rate was around 50%
but we have learned from the
challenges and would estimate
our success rate to be around 8085% today.
herd closure timeline (estimated
to be around 280 days), we
tested the population to verify
that the sow farm population
was no longer shedding and
introduced gilts again. Over the
next year, we verified that the
sow farm was indeed negative.
The downstream flow to this
sow farm no longer has chronic,
coughing pigs mid-late finishing
and has reduced their medication
use, reduced their death loss
(2-3%), and improved their gain.
When looking at the costs of the
MHP elimination and the benefits
to the downstream health and
performance, we would expect a
return on investment of less than
one year.
We presented the pros and
cons of this strategy and walked
the sow farm through each step
of this process. At the end of the
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