Last-minute registrations pushed the 2023 edition of Red Deer Swine Technology Workshop to a near record attendance of well over 220 people, mainly producers and barn staff, on October 18.
In his introductory remarks, Chair Alastair Bratton from Sunterra Foods stated that up to two weeks beforehand, there had been only 60 registrations for the annual seminar. And then the floodgates broke, and registrations started coming in with just a few days left to set up at Westerner Park in Red Deer. Normally held at the former Cambridge Hotel, the seminar was moved to accommodate construction of a new casino there. RDSTW organizers hope to return to the hotel next year, said Bratton.

First up among the speakers was Victor Poza Mareno, technical services manager for Danbred, invited to address strategies for managing highly prolific sows.
Mareno has decades of experience in sow production. He has worked with producers in many different markets and spent several years as a sow farm manager with numerous large companies.
There are two primary reasons that pigs die in the nursery, said Mareno. They die because they are cold, and they die because they are hungry. From breeding through weaning, barn staff can have a strong impact on the number of pigs that are born alive and thrive.
Starting with gilt development, he stated that breeding should be based on the body condition of the animal, with clear goals established for weight and backfat at breeding time, he said. Leaner gilts should be held back and fed more until they reach the target, and all bred females should be in optimal body condition when they arrive at farrowing.
He noted a strong correlation between feeding and farrowing length, advising that the right meal four hours before farrowing will provide the sow with the energy she needs to push out a large litter.
“We recommend feeding between 7.5 and nine pounds a day at least two days before the farrowing, because the farrowing, it would be like running a marathon,” said Mareno.
Among the issues he has seen in the farrowing room is that the animals are not provided with an adequate source of drinking water. Farrowing sows need access to a water source capable of delivering eight litres per minute of clean water, said Mareno. Two litres is simply not adequate. The drinking nipple should point downward to help the sow get as much of that water as possible into her throat with minimal spillage.
A good farrowing and fostering strategy can reduce the total number of sows in the breeding cycle, with more pigs per pen, he said.
Once farrowing is complete, producers can get the most out of their sows by ensuring that each animal is fully loaded with pigs. Mareno recommended that the number of pigs left on a sow should be based on the number of teats plus one. Additional pigs should be fostered. Milking cups should be on hand and barn staff should ensure that each pig gets at least 250 grams of colostrum.
The slides from Mareno’s presentation can be viewed by visiting the RDSTW page on the Alberta Pork website at albertapork.com

Following Mareno was a discussion on sow death loss and lameness by veterinarian Cassandra Jass from Iowa Select Farms, which has a total of 240,000 sows throughout the state and including one farm in Nebraska.
Sow mortality rates within the operation started to rise in 2020 and reached 23 per cent by January of 2021. Jass and her team were asked to analyze and resolve the issue, starting with the two farms that had the most severe problems. They found that one third of sow mortality losses could be attributed to sow lameness, so set about creating a strategy that would reduce that loss.
When you see a 23 per cent sow death loss number, it’s really easy to get discouraged. And so we had to change the way we were talking about things within our production groups and when we were on farms.
“What are we missing? What did we miss something that allowed her to get to this point where now she’s a part of our death loss rather than our productive herd?”
The strategy breaks down into three steps developed to reduce lameness and improve live- ability:
*Step 1: Every sow, every day. Be careful and intentional with our observations, view each sow from 360 degrees and look for signs of trouble.
*Step 2: Observation squared. Two sets of eyes on every sow, every day.
*Step 3: Support. Everyone in the operation must be on the same page.
“In 2017, we did a conversion from stall gestation to open-pen gestation. That was a really steep learning curve for us, so we already had some of that experience under our belt,” said Jass.
“We’ve also been doing a lot of herd health cleanups, so we had some weird parity distributions that we didn’t take into account necessarily. We had to take a step back and review our criteria for creating pens (to make sure) that we have the same parity or like parity animals paired together, making sure their body condition (and) their body size was similar and just really making sure we put that animal in an environment where she can (thrive).
The team started a list of at-risk criteria, including animals that are thin, that have long toenails or dew claws, and that have poor foot and leg conformation.
“We’ll either put all those animals in a pen together (or) leave them in a stall for the duration of their gestation,” said Jass.
“We’re creating an environment where that animal can compete and really thrive in her environment.”
Staff are trained to watch for sows that don’t clean up their feed before or after farrowing. Those sows are hand fed twice a day from the time they enter farrowing until three days post farrowing.
Observation covers the entire sow from front to back, including visual notations as well as attention to aromas, vocalizations and behaviours.
“Is she bright? Alert? Is she cleaning up her feed or is she just standing there with her head in the bunk. Is she slow to get up? Do we have to go get her up? If she’s standing with her head in the stall, maybe she’s toe tapping or maybe she’s just doing that number where they kind of have twinkle toes and they’re shifting their weight really slightly.”
Implementing the two-person choring system may seem to take more time, but it is more efficient, said Jass.
People from the support department, including vets, nutritionists, health services and welfare spend two weeks on every farm, helping staff learn two-person observation and helping them with the standards of practice that give a unified message, she said.
Nobody likes an audit, but those farm visits helped create a barn environment that dramatically reduced the incidence of lameness within each herd.
“No matter what we were there for, we were all focusing on the same thing and giving the same message. We had to. My team being involved there, we are never welcomed with applause when we come on farm. We had to create a relationship of trust,” said Jass.
“We really had to shift from being a warden to being a coach and developing relationships with our farms and their staff.”
“Lameness is now less than three per cent of the contributing factor to that overall sow death loss, so we’ve really made some headway.”
Picking up the ball as last speaker of the day, and in a timely move with the darkness of winter about to descend, Mike Tiede from Sunhaven Farms shared his thoughts on getting the barn ready for cold weather. He reminded his audience to bear in mind that trying to find a plumber to fix a breakdown when it’s -40C outside can be a big challenge. That’s when plumbers are going to already have their hands full, said Tiede. It’s best if production managers and staff take the time to ensure that the building and its mechanical systems are sealed up and functioning properly, he said.
Winterizing should start with a detailed inspection from the outside of the building and then work inward, said Tiede.

“I want to make sure my barns are fairly clean, fairly free of weeds outside; make sure they’ve got bait boxes out there and they keep them loaded with bait.
“Check your bin lids. The last thing you want is to end up with a foot of snow inside the bin. Check your unloaders and your bin boots because the last thing you want to do is change the bin boot when it’s -40 and the feed’s falling out and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Check the sump to make sure it has water, and that the unit is fit to withstand winter pressures, including snow load and ice.
Tiede said that pretty as a coating of frost looks on the trees in winter, it doesn’t belong in the soffits. They need to be cleaned out and should be partially closed to keep snow out of the barn. Make sure curtains are intact and will close all the way.
“We don’t want to wait till it’s -25 and there’s ice on the cable and those curtains won’t close all the way over.”
Taking it a step further, he said openings can be covered with insulation board and a vapour barrier.
Moving to the mechanical systems, he suggested bringing a plumber in before the cold weather hits to run pressure tests and check that all pumps, heaters and boilers are working properly.
“Every single room in this particular farm has a heat pump. You’ll have to go through and turn them on manually to make sure the pumps work.
“The other important one we deal with is heaters. I know farms that failed to check the heaters. Well, then we started them up, and they were smoking on the top. (Or) we fire them up and they don’t work at all. We like to blow our heaters out, ideally between each batch.”
It’s also important to make sure there is no dust collecting on top of the heaters, which can start a fire, he said.
Moisture will create problems in the barn’s mechanical systems, including the affects of rust and corrosion, said Tiede.
Switches can fail, so it helps to have spare parts on hand, he said.
If a fan freezes up, there will be no ventilation and it will take extra time to heat up the room. That 2:00 a.m. alarm call will come and most of the time the pigs are OK, but sometimes they’re not, said Tiede.
He has a camera with an infra-red device so he can go in and look for trouble spots.
He said the dialler on the temperature alarm should be checked routinely because, when it fails, that’s when there is going to be a big wreck.
“One thing I was told 25 years ago, when you come to an alarm call at 2:00 in the morning, one of the most important things to do is actually drive around the farm. See if there’s anything wrong because if you’ve got a whole bunch of smoke coming out of the fan, we don’t want to walk in blind.”
He also recommends cleaning out manure lines in fall to prevent a buildup that could plug them off when the weather turns cold.
“My conclusion is that preparation is key. It’s not going to prevent everything that’s going to happen. The thing is, when it does hit -30, something is going to fail. You know that. If you’ve got 64 heaters and you’ve serviced them all, it’s better than not doing anything, not knowing what’s going to work and all of a sudden, it’s -25.”
Barn managers and staff should be able to fix minor problems themselves, without relying on a plumber who could be hours away during an emergency, said Tiede. That training is part of being prepared for winter, he said.
Other speakers included Kevin Brooks offering tips on low-stress handling and tattooing market pigs; Veterinarian Egan Brockhoff providing his insight on disease identification and preparedness; Albert Cerenzie from Canadian Carbon Credits with an overview of carbon credit capture for hog farmers, and a pep talk on managing stress from motivational speaker Mark Bosworth from Kesa Consulting in Edmonton.
Red Deer Swine Technology Workshop is an annual event co-ordinated by Alberta Pork, with support from a team of volunteers and with funding help from industry sponsorships and trade booths. •
— By Brenda Kossowan