Emmy Koeleman
Emmy Koeleman (31) was born in Uithoorn, which is around 8 km from Amsterdam and very close to the famous flower market in Aalsmeer.
Despite having grown up with the main horticultural area in the Netherlands on her doorstep, her interest lay in agriculture.
In 1996, she began a BSc degree in Animal Husbandry at the Agricultural College in Delft. And then went on to complete an MSc in Animal Science at Wageningen University, where she completed her thesis at its department of Quantitative Veterinary Epidemiology.
Since graduating from Wageningen in 2002, Emmy has worked with a variety of companies involved in agricultural publishing. In 2003, she took up a position at Reed Business, initially as editorial assistant for the magazine Pig Progress, since 2005 she has been the editor of Feed Mix and co-editor of Feed Tech. In January 2010, Emmy became editor of Vetsweb.com, a leading online platform for large animal veterinarians.
Latest Blogs (1-10 of 14)
I was a bit shocked by a recent study that looked at Toxoplasma gondii prevalence in pigs. In many countries one out of six pigs carry the zoonotic parasite with them. In some Eastern European countries, the disease is even found in 25% of the pigs!
Piglets need iron supplements as they have a low deposit at birth, have a high grow rate and normally not have the ability to get the iron from soil. Sow milk only covers 10% of the iron need: this comes down to an iron deficit of approximately 155 mg per piglet. An iron injection is the most common method of filling this gap, but oral supplementation is a good alternative with some positive side effects.
For almost every animal disease that has been intensively and carefully investigated, evidence has been found for host genetic variation. Some animals are more resistant or more tolerant to the disease than others. Knowledge of these genetic differences and marking them could make disease control more efficient in the future.
Treating animals with care and respect is very important and (I hope) there is hardly any discussion about its importance in animal production. But there seems to be a discussion going on whether 'animal welfare' is considered a real science or just a combination of values, emotions and interpretations. But does it really matter?
The pressure is on for reducing antibiotics in animal production systems. But to be successful in this, the veterinarian, farmer and nutritionist should cooperate more in the form of 'health teams'.
For the pork producer, the top priorities are growth and feed conversion. But managing a finishing pig operation requires more than just providing good feed. Raising healthy, peaceful pigs is at least as important, and the livestock manager can also have a great deal of control over these aspects. Keeping the stress (aggression) under control is an important part in this.
Glycerol is a by-product of biofuel production and it may be used as an energy source in diets for pigs but there is limited research on its optimum level of inclusion or on the effect of performance and meat quality. Increased number of research papers show and increased ADG in pigs, but inclusion levels should not be too high.
This will not be a blog about nutrition but about design! My apologies for all the swine nutritionists out there but I do want to share a great book with you from Dutch designer Christien Meindertsma: PIG 05049.
Although fermented liquid feed can have benefits for pig health and performance it is not always applicable in all regions of the world. Piggeries in hot climates for example may face difficulties in managing the temperature of the liquid feed. However, new insights show that fermented liquid feed can be used very well in hot areas in the US for example.
Last month I was honoured to be part of the conference ‘Recent Advances in Animal Nutrition’ in Armidale, Australia. One of the speakers was Tony Edwards from ACE Livestock Consulting who took sometime to highlight significant breakthroughs in pig nutrition science.
