Augest, 1997 ^. Volume 20, Number 7

Dr. Charles Stanislaw will retire August 1, 1997 after 31 years as Extension Swine Specialist. Initially he was stationed in Wilson, NC working in an eight-county area. In 1983 he transferred to Raleigh to assume state-wide duties.

He has served as project leader for the Swine Development Center, located on the Upper Coastal Plain Research Station, Rocky Mount, since the Center's beginning in 1972. Under his guidance it became recognized across the country as an outstanding educational tool. Visitors from thirty states and well over thirty foreign counties have toured this facility.

Dr. Stanislaw was one of the first swine specialists to recommend using the more efficient crossing program of breed specific maternal and terminal lines, over the traditional three-breed rotation. To assist this, he developed a software program for estimating genetic worth in potential herd replacements. This software program was coordinated with the On-farm Swine Performance Testing Program, which he also guided, enabling program participants to use personal computers to generate the genetic evaluations.

Because of his broad knowledge in commercial swine production, he was an invited speaker on production conferences in ten states. He also had numerous international invitations, serving as production consultant in Estonia, Macedonia, Mexico, Poland the Ukraine. In addition, he was an invited speaker on swine events in Hungary and Panama.

Dr. Stanislaw was the Swine Commodity Coordinator for the Department of Animal Science and the faculty coordinator for the swine educational unit at the Lake wheeler Road Field Laboratory. Over the years, Dr. Stanislaw has served on numerous committees for the N.C. Pork Council, including Board of Directors, representing N.C. State University. He will continue to serve as the Secretary-Treasurer of the National Swine Improvement Federation.

Charles and his wife Edythe reside at 1445 Princess Anne Drive, Raleigh, NC 27607.

DESI Effectiveness Evaluations

CTC and OTC are the first two drugs to complete the national Academy of Sciences/National Research Council (NAS/NRC) animal Drug Efficacy Study Implementation (DESI) group's effectiveness evaluation. This means that the FDA has approved changes in the labeling and use of CTC and OTC. These new claims approved under DESI are both safe and effective.

New CTC and OTC Claims for Swine

1. 200g/ton CTC in finished feed is no longer available.
2. 400g/ton CTC is now approved only in breeding swine.
3. 10 mg/lb body weight daily of CTC or OTC has been added.
4. No levels over 50 g/ton of OTC are allowed except 10 mg/lb body weight.
   

New CTC Claims for Swine

New OTC Claims for Swine

Using the New Dosage Rates

The new DESI claims are in effect now. However, there is a transition period to allow distributors and feed companies to make the appropriate changes. The bottom line is that you can use the new dosage rates only if the bags of product you are using have the new DESI claim labeling. You cannot use the new dosage rates if the bags you are using have the old label claim. So, always follow the bag directions to use the appropriate rate.

Calculating Inclusion Rates When Using the 10 mg/lb Body Weight Rate

To calculate the inclusion rate using the 10 mg/lb of body weight, you need to use the following formula:

10 x Average Body Weight x 2
Average Feed Intake

This is the amount of CTC or OTC in grams per ton of feed. To calculate the amount of CTC or OTC premix to add to the feed use:

       grams CTC or OTC per ton       
grams CTC or OTC per lb of premix

For example, to treat 60 lb pigs that average 3.0 lbs of intake per day, one would need to add 10 x 60 x 2/3 = 400 g of drug per ton. If the drug premix contains 200 g per lb; then 400/200 = 2 lbs of drug premix needs to be added per ton of feed.

Source: Much of the information in this article was provided by Mark A. Werner, Wayne Feed Division, Continental Grain Company.

Eric van Heugten

The 1996 Iowa State University Swine Enterprise Records Summary provides an opportunity to make various cost and production parameter comparisons among weaned pig production, the nursery operation and the finishing operation. In Table 1 I have assembled those parameters that were listed in each of the three production site summaries. According to information supplied by Dr. Tom Baas, Iowa State University Specialist, the average weaning age in the 51 farms for which breeding-to-weaning data is available was approximately 21-22 days. Also, the average weight of the feeder pigs going into the finishing floors was 51 lbs.

Comparisons such as this provide an opportunity to evaluate labor and capital needs of each farm or stage of swine production. Land requirements are really not shown, but these could be estimated based on pounds of pork produced. Also, management skill requirements are not reflected. One should assume, however, that in these data, management was appropriate for that stage of production.

Charles Stanislaw

A key goal of the U.S. pork industry is to breed leaner, more muscular hogs. A producer checkoff-funded study recently conducted at Auburn University investigated the use of porcine somatotropin (pST) to increase the muscularity of pigs bred from boars with different muscularity traits.

Previous experiments with pST have shown postnatal benefits for muscle growth. In the Auburn study, 75 gilts were mated to boars with contrasting genetic extremes for muscling. One half were bred to heavily muscled boars and the other half were mated to light- to medium-muscled boars. Starting at day 14 of gestation, one half of the gilts in each group were injected twice daily with either 0 mg or .84 mg pST.

The gilts were then randomly slaughtered at six gestational points: 16, 18, 20, 22, 24 and 28 days of gestation. The researchers determined that the pST injection increased the embryos' muscle cell number by 20 percent. The researchers found few consistent differences between genotypes in expressions of extremes of muscularity.

Investigators also reported an enhanced reproductive performance consistent with previous findings. They reported that the gilts that had been injected with pST had a larger number of surviving embryos (15.2 vs. 11.5). In addition, the rate of total survival was also higher (84 percent vs. 76 percent). An increase of one pig per litter could mean more than $50 more per litter, researchers said.

Further research is necessary to determine postpartum survivability, effects on the sow and the optimum dosage of pST for even better results.

This project abstract is from "Use of Maternal pST Treatment to Manipulate Fetal Muscle Development of Progeny from Terminal and Maternal Genotype Matings" by Donald R. Mulvaney et al., Auburn University.

NPPC Tech Talk
Vol. 2, No. 1

An eight-page guide, "On Farm Euthanasia of Swine - Options for the Producer," was recently published to aid producers in making the appropriate decisions regarding euthanasia of swine. It was a checkoff-funded Animal Welfare Committee project, completed in cooperation with the American Association of Swine Practitioners and the American Veterinary Medical Association. For a free copy of the guide, call NPPC's Ordering Department at 515-223-2621.

NPPC Pork Leader
Vol. 16, No.10
May 9, 1997

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Last modified August 5, 2000.

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