Title: Keeping Show Pigs Healthy - What are some good practices?
Headings: Keeping Show Pigs Healthy
Keeping Show Pigs Healthy
Starting with Healthy Pigs
Isolating Pigs from the Farm
Following good health management Practices
Using Good Watering and Feeding Practices
Taking Care During and After Surgery
Recognizing Risks on the Farm
Vaccinating to Prevent Serious Diseases
Deworming Healthy Pigs
Diagnosing and Treating Sick Pigs Promptly
Using prescribed Drugs properly
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Content: To prevent complications such as abscesses, consider utilizing a veterinarian who uses anesthesia for castration, uses an aseptic surgical technique and closes the castration site. Veterinarians also commonly perform other surgeries requiring anesthesia, such as removal of a retained testicle (cryptorchidism), removal of an infected and enlarged urine pocket (preputial diverticulum removal), repair of the scrotal or an umbilical hernia, and removal of tumors. Before a surgeon administers anesthesia to your pigs, you need to understand that properly complying with drug withdrawal times can conflict with future exhibition dates. This is especially true for larger, older pigs. Therefore, always talk to your veterinarian before- hand and cooperatively plan any surgery involving anesthesia to ensure you’re in compliance. Obviously, if you choose a gilt for the exhibition, you can avoid many of the potential problems of barrows
Recognizing Risks on the Farm
Even if you use the best management techniques to minimize the exposure of your show pig to disease, the pig’s dam (or sow) can still pass disease-causing bacteria and viruses to each pig in its litter. The piglets can encounter these organisms while they are moving through the birth canal, when they nurse, and while they simply share the same space with the sow before weaning. Harmful bacteria, for example, may be found in the sow’s body secretions. Before and after weaning are also times that pigs can become infected with roundworms, whipworms, mange or lice. Another way they can be exposed to disease-causing organisms is when several litters from the same farm are mixed in the nursery.