The opinion of the bloggers do not necessarily reflect the opinion of PigProgress.net or Reed Business. Comments welcome.
Latest Blogs (101-110 of 248)
SPACE: France facing the crisis
After a fall of agricultural income in 2008 (-11% in real terms, after two years of exceptional growth), French farmers have to face the consequences of the world crisis.
What limits growth in piglets?
We all know very well that young pigs fail to realise their full potential for growth, at least in the period immediately post-weaning. With this statement, I would like to invite our readers to contribute their thoughts on the reasons or factors that limit post-weaning growth and (or) feed intake. My own thoughts on this very controversial topic are below:
Barbecue
Prior to working for Pig Progress I worked for a daily newspaper. I still read the paper on a daily basis to see what topics my ex-colleagues choose to highlight.
Hyperprolificacy and the 'shattered sow syndrome'
The Oxford English Dictionary defines hyperprolificacy as 'super-abundant production of offspring'. Quite so. Thanks to the geneticist and the increasing skill of the ordinary producer, the 25 weaners/ sow/ year of ten years ago is now considered an acheivable target for anybody, and even passé by some.
Breakthroughs in pig nutrition
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.
Antimicrobial resistance and antibiotic use – where are we?
In Europe the use of growth promoters was banned from 2006 and now in the US, there is a bill likely to be presented to the House of Representatives, effectively to do the same thing. However, in Europe there is a further move to ban the use of antibiotics for prevention of infection, either at a low dose, given continuously or at a high dose, metaphylactically, to control infections – are we going a step too far, misguidedly?
Feeding sick pigs
How to properly feed sick pigs is probably the most important question scientists throughout the world will struggle to answer in the next ten to twenty years. As we move closer to a global economy based heavily on industrial pig production, health and diseases become more and more important from an economic point of view.
Agriculture in 2018
Early this year, I wrote a weblog with the title 'Agriculture in 2017'. The general idea, quoting several scientific projections, was that the future looked very optimistic for pork production.
Save 40% on your weaning to slaughter feed costs
I have recently been studying what my best producers do compared to the average results I come across. The difference is a staggering 40% variation in performance costs from weaning to slaughter. At the risk of this being a rather long item I think it worthwhile to summarise what can lead to this difference.
More from IPVS 2010
The IPVS is plunging into the digital revolution. At this time we are still in the midst of planning and discussing many of the changes we envision. As a result I will hold off going into too much detail on some of the changes and instead, just lift the curtain ever so slightly to give a glimpse of changes that can be expected.
