A Review of Nursery Scouring - Dr. Keith Kinsley, Swine Services Manager, Standard Nutritional Services, from the 2012 Boehringer Ingelheim Swine Health Seminar, August 9-11, 2012, Wrightsville Beach, NC, USA. More presentations at http://www.swinecast.com/2012-boehringer-ingelheim-carolina-swine-health-seminar

1. Keith P. Kinsley, DVM
Standard Nutrition Services
August 10th, 2012
Summer Health Seminar
Wilmington, NC

2.  Nursery animals = Nursery AGED animal
 Weaning (2 – 4 weeks) – 10/11 weeks of age
 May be found in:
▪ Conventional nursery
▪ Wean-to-finish barn
▪ Finishing barn; Short nursery stay (4 week turns)
▪ Farrowing site holding room
 Transitioning from liquid, milk-based diet, to dry
corn-soy-like diet

3. U of MN 2011 Swine Submissions
 Many times not a Animal Ages
0-3 weeks
Total Animals Submitted
536
Enteric Involvement
399
%
74.4%
dramatic disease 4-6 weeks 695 411 59.1%
7-9 weeks 471 213 45.2%
presentation 10-15 weeks 487 239 49.1%
 Scouring ISU 2011 Top 10 Swine Enterics 2011
 Wasting pigs
 Variable mortality
 Poor performance
 May be difficult to
measure real-time

4.  Complicated, multifactorial disease process in many
instances
 Infectious Disease
 Nutritional
 Environmental
 Management induced
 Often difficult to point to precise, single cause
 NEED most accurate diagnosis to determine what is
significant and actionable
 May mean multiple time points
 May mean many animals tested – and not just daily deads
 Avoid the “throwing the kitchen sink” approach

6. 1. Source of the animals
 Are there others receiving the same pigs? What
do they notice?
 Has there been a change at the sow farm?
▪ Practices – hygiene, handling, crate/litter
management
▪ Vaccinations or treatment of sows (or lack thereof)
▪ Employee changes

7. 2. Previous history of the group
 Sow farm broke with ____________ 10 days ago
 Heater out overnight on this group in farrowing
 Farrowing site nursery management
▪ Water
▪ Feed
▪ Treatments

8. 3. Group vaccination and treatments to this
point
 Piglets did not get their normal processing
program, processed late in life, etc.
 This group missed __________ vaccination
 All piglets needed to be handled and retreated
outside normal routines – because of ________

9. 4. Site history – Where weaned pigs go
 Water quality
 Manager abilities
 Same as or greatly different from historical
groups on site

10. 5. Barn design, pen layout, environment
 Finishers attached to nursery barn
 Large pens v. small pens – how easy to identify and
treat those needing help
▪ More importantly the effort required to get it done
▪ Speed at which it is moving through the barn – may help to
identify pathogen and urgency of treatment required
 Temperature swings in the barn, water availability,
adequate air quality and ventilation rates
 “The barn has pens and nursery feeders” therefore it
is a nursery – NO!

11. 6. Age of the animals at onset of disease
 Duration in the barn before signs noticed
 Ration associated
▪ “Pigs always struggle when switched from X to Y
ration”
▪ From pellet to grind and mix
▪ From no distillers to 400 pounds
▪ Mixing errors – F6 delivered to first nursery grind and
mix
▪ Bin/Phase management – feed out whatever is in bin
from last group

12. 7. Identifiable Points of Risk
 Farrow-to-finish sites, wean-to-finish sites, v. 3-
site production
 Biosecurity between buildings, age spread of
animals on site
 Seasonality

13. U of MN 2011 Submissions 0 – 3 week old
animals
 Seasonality – that 60
which we cannot 50
40
control 30
20
Clostridium
perfringens
Rotavirus
 Can we make 10
0
preparatory
Nov
Aug
Feb
Jan
Jun
Jul
Oct
Sep
Apr
Dec
Mar
May
adjustments?
▪ Extra shavings on trucks 80
▪ Prewarmed nurseries – not 60
Rotavirus 0 -3
just warmer than outside 40 week olds
▪ Electrolytes or acidified 20
Rotavirus 4-6
week olds
water intervention 0
▪ Antibiotic intervention on
arrival

14.  Clinical signs plus timing may tell us the story
we need to address and correct the issue
 Scouring
 Wasting pigs
 When clinical signs are not obvious or timing
is variable… How do we measure the effects?
 Mortality
 Feed and water intakes
 Site records

15.  Diagnostics
 What do they tell us?
 Are diagnostics telling the correct story?
▪ Fallback pigs with E. coli and Salmonella – What are we
actually addressing?
▪ Circovirus plus ________ scenario – Are we vaccinating
for the pig’s benefit or ours?
▪ What about water or feed samples?

16.  Early Nursery (weaning – 2 weeks post-wean)
 Many of the same entities that the sow farm
experiences – Rotavirus, Clostridium type A, E.
coli, Transmissible Gastroenteritis (TGE)
 Does it arrive with the pigs?
 Is it on the site?
Animal Age Clostridium Perfringens E. coli Rotavirus A Rotavirus B Rotavirus C TGE
0-3 weeks 241 91 68 40 146 2
4-6 weeks 6 32 261 177 169 26
7-9 weeks 1 6 147 98 103 19
10-15 weeks 2 6 132 112 73 28
- University of MN D-Lab 2011

17.  Late Nursery (2 weeks post-wean – 10 weeks of age)
 What is on the site – E. coli, Salmonella, Intestinal
parasites, Lawsonia, Brachyspira, TGE?
 What are the vaccination practices?
▪ Circovirus vaccinations occur after pigs demonstrate they are
healthy – how long did we wait?
▪ Partial dosing of vaccines – is there really a cost benefit and does it
hold in the face of exposure?
ISU D-Lab 2011 –
identified as causal

18.  Where are the animals found with enteric
disease?
 Conventional nursery v Finishing Floor
 Open housing v Confinement
Pathogen Type of Organism Typical Age affected
Brachyspira bacteria Late nursery and older
Circovirus virus Mid nursery and older
Clostridium bacteria Suckling to Early nursery
Coccidiosis protazoa Early nursery
E. coli bacteria Mid nursery and younger
Lawsonia bacteria Late nursery and older
Rotavirus virus Mid nursery and younger
Roundworms parasite Late nursery and older
Salmonella bacteria Any age
TGE virus Any age

19.  Sorting out enteric disease without an obvious
clinical presentation:
 Changes in feed and water intake
▪ Changes to rations recently
▪ Major ingredient change
▪ Grind consistency change
 Increased sudden deaths without respiratory
involvement
 Pale pigs
 Health status change – especially immunosuppressive
▪ New disease introduction
▪ Where are diagnostics leading us

20.  Nutritional causes of enteric disease or under
performance
 Non-starting pigs – Why?
 Site management – are we correctly identifying
and addressing animals needing help?

21.  Personal favorite – NECROPSY
 Fixed and fresh tissues
▪ Tie off fresh sections of small intestine
▪ Keep fresh small and large intestinal sections separate
▪ Many cut sections of small and large intestine for fixed
▪ Send everything as most labs run on per animal basis
not per sample basis – lung, heart, kidney, spleen, liver,
lymph nodes, tonsil – We never know what we may find

22.  Additional items for enteric work up
▪ Fecal samples
▪ Fecals can be good for PCR – Lawsonia, TGE, Brachyspira or parasite
fecal floatations
▪ Not as good for culture versus fresh intestinal samples
▪ Blood samples
▪ Good for telling what has happened to the group
▪ Better for some enteric pathogens than others
▪ Feed samples
▪ May need these as back-up if nothing else pans out
▪ Sometimes what makes it to the feeder is not how it was designed
▪ Water samples
▪ Often overlooked and many times has not been done on site since
original well testing
▪ There are some special supply needs and timing issues to go with
water sampling

23.  What should we test for?
 General work-up of tissues
▪ Most labs are pretty good at getting to the bottom of
the problem if given age and clinical signs
▪ If taking blood samples for enteric work-up, question is
usually: “Is there something else going on here?”
▪ PRRS, Flu, Circovirus
▪ Odd timing of enteric disease such as ileitis
▪ Fecals can typically be processed with the tissues
without a lot of extra cost

24.  Ancillary testing
▪ Feed and water samples may need to
end up at a secondary laboratory
depending on what we are looking
for
▪ Feed can be stored for a considerable
amount of time before being
analyzed
▪ Depending on the desired tests for
water, these may need more
immediate attention
▪ Always good to have documentation
when not directly an infectious
disease issue

25.  What are our choices?
 Can we treat cost effectively?
 Can we vaccinate to control?
 Is it more effective to eliminate?
 We must know the root of the problem
before we can do anything
 How do we measure improvement or success
from our intervention?

26.  Treat – we can manage it!
 Make the decision to tolerate as long as it can be
reasonably managed
 Address with antibiotic program
 Change biosecurity practices

27.  Vaccination
 No effective or applicable treatment available
▪ Viral organism that does not respond to treatment
▪ Niche marketing – ABF, Whole Foods
 Cost effectiveness benefits of vaccination outweigh
uncertainty of other options
 Disease is slightly more painful than what can be
managed through treatment alone

28.  Eliminate – I cannot live with this!
 No cost effective treatment
 No really great vaccine or vaccination is not cost
effective
 Only way to fix is to break the cycle and clean-up

29.  Measuring improvement
 Improved performance through the nursery
▪ Reduced mortality
▪ Increased daily gain and improved feed efficiency
▪ Reduced intervention costs
 Continued monitoring
 Record analysis – nursery aged production
 Communication with sow farm
▪ Testing
▪ Friendly warnings of group health challenges

30.  Sow farm contributions
 Vaccination changes
 Adjustment of farrowing house practices
▪ Not entering crates
▪ No holding back litters
▪ Better on site nursery management

31.  Nursery enteric disease is often complicated by
multiple factors simultaneously
 A good herd/source history will help reach an
actionable point of intervention
 Diagnostics are key to effective nursery enteric
intervention – tissues, fecals, blood as well as feed and
water - $$$ better spent in knowing than guessing!
 Economics of disease will drive the intervention
method – treat, control, or eliminate
 Follow-up communication and monitoring will
determine the long-term success of plan put in place