Putting the newest products and ideas in front of the people who can use them is a primary function of the awards program at Banff Pork Seminar. The 2024 award, including the George Foxcroft Lectureship, the R.O. Ball Young Scientist Award and the F.X. Aherne Prize for Innovative Pork Production, provided a launch pad for ideas that bring benefits directly to producers.
The George Foxcroft Lectureship was established in 2013 upon the retirement of a University of Alberta swine researcher who had become a stalwart on the BPS team. Foxcroft died late in 2021, leaving a legacy of discovery that continues today.
In a break from its usual practice, the 2024 Lectureship was offered to a group rather than an individual. PigGen Canada, a collaboration of genetics companies, was invited to bring some of their top scientists to present their work and to then sit as a panel and speak about the role and future of genetic science in improving pig production.
PigGen Chair Tom Rathje from DNA Genetics, Egbert Knol from Topigs Norsvin and previous Foxcroft Lecturer Jack Dekkers from Iowa State University were invited to speak ahead of the panel, which also included Patrick Charagu from Hypor Genetics.
Bob Kemp, vice-president of research and development for Genesus, took Rathje’s place on the stage when a massive snowstorm closed airports across the mid-western United States, including Columbus, Nebraska.
In presenting what was to have been Rathje’s material, Kemp described the affect of substantially improved accuracy in genomics in areas including litter size, piglet survival rate and resilience.
“The biggest benefit from genomics comes from those traits with things like low heritability, right? So: Litter size, survival rate, things where when you look at the actual measure of litter size. There’s a much larger effect of the environment and so on than there is genetics on differences between that actual phenotype, but now we can get more accuracy with genomics also,” he said.
In response to a question from the floor, Knol said it’s important to understand implications from changes made through genomics. Research in pig management and nutrition have helped with that.
“We do see certainly recommendations coming out from different nutrition groups and you know how they’re feeding sows and some of those kinds of things, same thing on the nursery side,” said Knol.
PigGen Canada members include Genesus, Hypor, AcuFast, DNA Genetics and Topigs Norsvin.

The R.O. Ball Young Scientist Award is named for U of A Professor Emeritus Ron Ball, a nutritionist and long-time organizer of BPS.
Each year, graduate students from across the continent are invited to submit posters of their research, which are then displayed in the common areas outside the conference room. Four of those students are then selected as finalists for the award, which provides cash to the top two. Entrants this year were Ashlyn Scott from University of Manitoba in first place for Burlap and Bunnies; Joshua Theriault from U of A in second place for his presentation about biofilm formation and amoxicillin resistance of e. coli; Vishesh Bhatia from Iowa State University on disease resilience indicators and Marley Conceicao from University of Saskatchewan for her team’s study of the effects of beta-glucans on intestinal inflammation in weanlings.
In her presentation, Scott described a study in which her team mixed suckling pigs and hung burlap over the stall walls during the nursing stage and also in post-weaning to determine what benefits the enrichment and social mixing might provide, including reducing the impact of stressors normally associated with weaning. The team worked with a control group, and three experimental groups of a single sow, two sows and four sows. They kept score of various factors in each pen, including udder and teat lesions, laid-on pigs, cross-suckling and aggressive behaviour.
“We hypothesized that enrichment, whether it be burlap or buddies, would improve piglet performance, behaviour and welfare around weaning by reducing those aggressive behaviours among pigs,” said Scott.
“We saw that our groups of two litters that were mixed had the most active piglets compared to those single-litter groups and our groups of four letters were an intermediate between the two. Travelling between crates did occur when the piglets were in those mixed groups but there was no difference between the piglets that had access to four crates or two crates,” she said.

“In summary, mixing and burlap had positive effects on piglet behaviour and welfare with no impact on the performance around weaning. To recap of the burlap results, we saw fewer displacements post-weaning, fewer fights between piglets, which then led to fewer lesions post-weaning.
“(Mixed groups) had fewer crushing instances of piglets being crushed by the sow, less biting between pigs post-weaning, which again resulted in fewer lesions post-weaning.
“Both the pre-weaning mixing as well as the object and measurement – in our case burlap – had positive effects and helped deal or mitigate with some of these issues.”
The study demonstrated that either or both enrichment techniques can reduce stress around weaning and can be implemented in commercial production systems, said Scott.
Named after another U of A professor who has passed away since its inception, the F.X. Aherne award seeks and rewards production staff who have created a method or tool that makes their job easier and safer.
This year, the award went a commercial operation in Dave Klocke of Templeton, Iowa for the creation of MealMeter2.0, a “smart” sow feeder to monitor and improve health and productivity in the breeding barn.

The MealMeter2.0 simulates the sow’s natural rooting and drinking behaviour, encouraging them to consume the feed and water as it is dispensed. The result is minimal waste and a clean bowl, Klocke said via streaming video from his home office.
He invited people to visit his business page, pigeasy.com for a closer look at the MealMeter2.0 and other innovations offered for sale.

BPS staff will seek new nominees for the 2025 awards. Please visit banffpork.ca for nomination criteria. •
— By Brenda Kossowan