Garry Wollmann is the barn manager at Clearwater Hutterite Colony near Balmoral, Manitoba where they operate a 700 sow farrow to finish producing up to 17,000 pigs, which go to HyLife at Neepawa, MB. They have a liquid feeding system for their sows and finishing. The nursery is wet dry feeders and in 2014, the colony remodelled the barn with new flooring, a new feeding system and feeders in addition to changing the penning to one big pen per room of 400 pigs. In October 2015, the colony began raising pigs without antibiotics, (RWA) program and began shipping RWA pigs in April 2016.

Wollmann shared his story with fellow producers and industry representatives at the recent Manitoba Swine Seminar in Winnipeg, MB.

“Well, I guess I shared our story, because since April of 2016, we’re shipping RWA, which is raised without antibiotic, pigs to HyLife in Neepawa, and I guess I just shared our story of how we got there, as it took us three years to get there and some of the challenges that we faced and how we overcame those challenges,” he said.

Wollmann said the reason the colony decided to go RWA was because he knew that there were changes coming down the pipe as far as in-feed antibiotic goals, and so he wanted to wean their operation off of antibiotics as quickly as possible.

His plan was to do it while those antibiotics were still available to them, they could go back on to the antibiotics and figure out how to deal with the challenges instead of waiting until those products weren’t available as much anymore and then be faced with another challenge right off the top.

When the colony decided to move towards RWA, Wollmann’s first challenge was to rid the pigs Ileitis breakouts.

“At the time, we had antibiotics in-feed to try and control it, and we had special prescriptions where we were going in at twice the levels already, and we were still getting the break,” he said. “It was a very frustrating situation. Every time we made an adjustment and tweaked it, when we thought we had it fixed for a couple of months, we wouldn’t see anything. You’d show up one morning, and once again, you would see that a new room had broken out, and Ileitis was still there and still an issue.”

After much testing, trial and error with antibiotic levels, vaccines, and different feed mixtures nothing solved their problem.

Finally it came right down to their drinking water and clean water lines. After cleaning out the water lines and using a different vaccine they finally had their first two-week trial without any Ileitis breaks.

“Okay, now we’re brave enough after figuring this out, let’s pull out all the medication and make sure we vaccinate,” said Wollmann. “We vaccinated all the pigs and no feed medications, and we have been successful with the Ileitis, with that treatment, has controlled the ileitis for us.”

This was a great way to move into the system raising pigs without antibiotics, RWA and with great benefits.

“We’ve increased our carcass weight by four to five KGs per pig, brought our days to market down by three to four days at the same time, so our average daily gain has gone up by over 150 grams a day, and our feed conversions have improved,” said Wollmann. “To us it’s been a win win, where our performance is better, we’re shipping heavier pigs, younger pigs, and our feed costs are actually less than what they were before.”

Should the pigs have serious breakout of disease, he said they wouldn’t hesitate to treat with antibiotics and do whatever the vet’s plan would be. Those pigs just wouldn’t qualify for RWA production until disease free and cleared all the antibiotics out of their system, but regular market pigs.

The Clearwater Colony had another problem that of swollen joints in the pigs and this too came down to a lack of cleanliness on their ‘medical carts’.

“If the doctor who did the procedure showed me his operating room and it looked like this cart, would I have stayed in the hospital — my answer was no. I would’ve run out of there as quickly as I could,” he said. “I told my fellow workers I will clean the cart for you once, and I expect you to maintain it in that condition.”

It took him two hours of scrubbing to clean it. It’s so clean now, and maintained in such a way that he wouldn’t be afraid of eating off that cart.

“Our cleanliness, what we call clean today isn’t what we called clean three years ago,” said Wollmann. “It’s gotten a lot better, and that’s where we made the biggest strides, is by what we call clean today.”

After his presentation at the MSS, some of the people made the comment to the people that they were sitting beside, many would have quit halfway through getting there.

“It took us three years to get here with trial and error and trying different things, and different ideas, but the main thing where we made the biggest headways is using the labs in Winnipeg, submitting some pigs to exactly identify what the issue was, not assuming what we think it is, and then going forward with a plan of action and tweaking it to get the results where we are today,” concluded Wollmann. •

— By Harry Siemens