New Pig Progress: Where Denmark meets China

Pig Progress travelled to the Dan Yu Breeding Farm, in Lianyungang to learn more about the ambitious projects the Danish set up in the east of China. Apart from a breeding facility, the Danish have also embarked on producing own commercial pigs. The Chinese ain’t seen nothing yet… Page 20

Novel way to keep piglets warm

More Denmark in this issue: what to think of a novel way of keeping young piglets warm – not by light but by radiation. The new eHeat concept, marketed by Danish agricultural logistics company Grene-Kramp, is designed to heat a wider space, can be programmed to provide less heat over time and also comes with darkness at night. Page 29

Starfish good food for piglets?

Yet another item from Danish origin: the number of starfish in the country’s waters is troubling local mussel farmers. Why not grab the opportunity and use them in piglet feed? At Aarhus University, they did a trial. Page 28

Making piglets fancy creep feeding

Piglet feeding receives enough attention as this month’s research article dives into the question of how to get more piglets to consume creep feed. Less than even 50% of piglets actually eat creep feed. At Canada’s Prairie Swine Centre, researchers tried to tempt some piglets to take a bite. Page 8

Nuscience, its strong growth and its new CEO

Where piglet feeding also takes a prominent role is at the rapidly growing company Nuscience, headquartered in Drongen, Belgium. The company has experienced very strong growth over the last few years. Late 2015, Johan De Schepper became Nuscience’s new CEO. He informs about his plans for the years to come. Page 14

Johan De Schepper, CEO Nuscience: “There is much more efficiency improvement to be achieved.”

Searching for alternative protein sources

Zooming out, and looking into nutrition in general, it is interesting to see that globally a search has started on alternatives for South American soybeans. Wilbert Hilkens of ABN Amro summarises a series of possible alternatives. Page 24

Why France’s pig industry is struggling

This month’s country in focus is France. The year 2015 hasn’t been the easiest year for the French pig industry, and sometimes the country appears at a disadvantage to its neighbours. Investments are needed in most sectors, concludes correspondent Philippe Caldier. Page 12

Investments are what are needed in the French pig industry. This farm in Brittany, for instance, was newly built in 2012.

DNA, SNPs, QTLs and more

Columnist John Gadd closes off his quest to define new technical terms and stands still at ‘genomics’. Everything you always wanted to know on DNA, SNPs and QTLs now all combined in one comprehensive article. Page 11

Group housing for sows made tangible

Dr Monique Pairis-Garcia looks back to the first Tri-State Sow Housing Conference. She calls it a successful and educational experience, and tells all about the importance of the event that helped to make the US better prepared for transition to group housing for sows. Page 34

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