Partnering the right vaccine with sanitation and hygiene measures can head off a lot of headaches in your farrowing space.
When it comes to removing the threat of rotavirus to your piglets, there’s no single solution; you will need a combination of tactics. That’s because rotavirus-induced scours is a complex combination of factors.
Presence of the virus on a farm isn’t by itself enough to lead to clinical infection. Those piglets most likely to experience scours — in the 2- to 7-days-old range — need to also be susceptible to infection. This might happen through lack of immunity, environmental stressors, an overwhelming viral challenge to their still-developing immune systems or a combination of these factors.
For this reason, many producers wanting to head off rotaviral challenges are moving away from simply treating an outbreak, to more effective preventive measures.
Treatment for scours often consists of administering antibiotics. This doesn’t work on a virus; moreover, unnecessary antimicrobial application can actually wipe out the beneficial bacteria in the piglet’s gut that help maintain its developing immune system and appetite. This is why it’s important that even if your litter’s scours match the description for rotavirus infection, you should have diagnostic testing done, since it could instead be bacterial or another virus entirely at fault.
But effectively fighting rotavirus infection starts earlier, through maternal antibodies the piglet receives in colostrum and subsequent milk. The best way to protect your piglets from rotaviral scours is through a healthy sow with pre-farrow vaccine. Although some producers prefer using feedback for sows, the resulting immunity usually only works in cycles and can still leave gaps for piglet scours — vaccine-induced immunity is more even and dependable.
Because there are different killed vaccines to immunize against rotavirus, especially if you are experiencing chronic scours in your litters or see a spike despite using a rigorous pre-farrow vaccine schedule, it’s important to conduct diagnostic tests for the viral strain responsible. Rotavirus consists of several species that can each mutate rapidly; this means you may need to change your vaccine or even have your veterinarian prescribe an autogenous one.
I recommend having a diagnostic sequence performed every 3-6 months even if you’re not seeing scours, since I believe it’s better to be proactive and prevent illness and mortalities rather than wait for clinical infection to land in your crate.
In fact, start boosting your sow’s immunity when she’s still a gilt. While acclimating her to the sow herd, expose her to rotavirus and vaccinate before she’s bred. This ensures the pre-farrow vaccination and/or feedback are not her first exposure — which can mean possible illness and diarrhea — and are instead just another layer to her immunity toward creating strong maternal antibodies.
Partnering the right vaccine with sanitation and hygiene measures can head off a lot of headaches in your farrowing space. Such measures are highly effective tools for keeping rotavirus infection down in piglets.
Ask yourself when cleaning between litters: Is the crate completely free of organic matter on which rotavirus (and other pathogens) can survive? Are you lifting dividers, getting into corners and under the crate where manure and other matter can build up? Also:
Clean with hot water — heat helps denature rotavirus
Use degreasers or detergents that also destroy biofilm buildup
Rotate your disinfectants and use different classes of them, to discourage pathogenic resistance
Whitewashing using an alkaline base that alters the pH of surfaces helps kill pathogens
Your goal is to make all farrowing surfaces hostile to rotavirus but safe for the sow and piglets. In addition, clean farrowing hallways and other high-traffic areas such as wean pig chutes before and after sows move through the farrowing room. Other measures to consider:
Cover or change footwear when moving from hallways and other areas into the farrowing crate
Change gloves between handling different litters
If a litter is scouring, handle non-scouring litters first (and change gloves)
It may not be necessary to ban cross-litter fostering on your farm, but it’s something to seriously consider if you want to do absolutely all you can to limit potential transmission — talk with your veterinarian
Keeping piglets warm, dry and fed also goes a long way toward discouraging infection. This might include drying agents, adjusting height and intensity of heat lamps and even administering an oral drench for moisture and electrolytes if necessary. The main focus for providing nutrition to the piglet should be on sow wellness — if she’s comfortable and eating and drinking well to produce plenty of milk, hungry piglets are far more likely to thrive.
For the best chance of keeping rotavirus off the farm, add regularly reviewing cleaning, handling and sow and piglet care practices in your barn to your care checklist.
Start by monitoring metrics. Keep track of how many litters, and piglets in those litters, are showing scours, and which sows so you can note patterns. Other data to use are scours mortalities, but also low wean weights and inconsistent growth among piglets in the same litter or of whole litters at wean time.
If diagnostics show your vaccines are up-to-date for rotavirus present in your operation, physically observe the people doing the work and be sure your protocols are being followed. So much of piglet health success rests on a farm’s staff sticking to successful processes, daily. If I’m visiting a farm that is having scours issues, I take time to observe workers handling the farrowing, piglets and sow care, as well as those washing and disinfecting, administering pre-farrow vaccines and more. The missing link in a rotavirus outbreak or even chronic persistence is sometimes as simple as a change to materials or retraining on correct procedure.
Similarly, if you hire new or reassign someone to do a different job, it’s a good idea to check in when they begin to make sure they are trained and doing their task properly.
Weaning healthy piglets is just part of the equation for a sow farm’s success. It is also important to create biosecure procedures that are practical and easy to implement and follow, use data effectively to monitor for small changes so they don’t become large problems and otherwise be proactive against those factors that allow rotavirus to take hold and stick around.
