Norman White relies on producing top-quality gilts to select the breeding females for his 500-sow closed herd, which produces bacon-weight finished pigs. But traditionally his unit has suffered a problem with acute ileitis in 5-10 per cent of gilts after they are moved from the finishing house.
The worry was that other gilts had the potentially devastating disease without showing symptoms and that their performance would be adversely affected, too.
Mr White, whose unit is at Egford, near Frome in Somerset, decided after discussions with his veterinary adviser to vaccinate his gilts with Enterisol® Ileitis, an oral vaccine only recently available in the UK.
That was just a few months ago. But, already, the results have been astounding, he says. "All clinical disease has gone, and there has been a brilliant improvement in the gilts. They are growing better, are a lot fitter and in better condition – better backfat levels, for example. Our vets were astonished at the level of improvement in such a short time."
He is so pleased with the productivity gained that he is now vaccinating all pigs from about weaning age.
A survey carried out last year showed ileitis is endemic across the UK and other EU pig industries. The survey points to a staggering 97 per cent of breeding herds being infected with Lawsonia intracellularis, the pathogen that causes ileitis. It showed also that 93 per cent of finishing herds are affected, and 40 per cent of farms have 'positive' pigs at the end of the nursery period.
The decision to vaccinate all pigs was not taken lightly, he says. "I don't spend money easily, and individually dosing weaners – which is the method we use – obviously takes time. But if I achieve similar improvements in commercial pigs to those seen in the gilts it will be a valuable investment."
Mr White has been at Lower Egford Farm since 1976. In 1986 he increased herd size from 100 sows to 500 and began finishing his pigs, taking them through to bacon weight. The herd was closed in 1989, with boars and gilts taken from stock. In 2001 it changed to AI with bought-in semen and boars, and GP females.
Piglets are weaned at 4-5 weeks in verandas in groups of 30 and then split by sex into 15s, remaining in those groups throughout production. They move to finishing houses at about 40kg, and finish at about 100kg liveweight.
Vaccinating young piglets was only recently introduced, and so the system is too young to have records showing how performance has improved, he says. "Also, when the treated gilts have had a few litters a parity analysis will show how badly productivity was affected by ileitis," he adds.
