Veterinary medecine

A happy pig is a profitable pig!

A contented pig is a profitable pig. In a nutshell, this is what Vincent Girard, Professor of Animal Nutrition and Feeding at the Université de Montréal Faculty of Veterinary Medicine maintains. “Recent research shows that if you improve the well-being of livestock, their immune resistance increases and they are less vulnerable to infection. Vaccines are also more effective, and you don’t need to use drugs as often,” he goes on to say.

With a host of research projects, in particular on new pharmaceuticals specially made for the hog industry, animal health researchers are now putting a lot of energy into alternatives to using antibiotics in the industry. But to encourage farmers to adopt new practices, you have to use language they understand. “Farmers think in terms of costs and profits,” Mr. Girard notes. “To get them to change their practices, they have to be convinced that the changes will make them more competitive.” Director of a 12 million dollar project funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Professor Girard hopes to bring farmers and scientific researchers together in the coming years. The grant covers the cost of building a 10.5 million dollar animal care centre on the Faculty’s campus at Saint-Hyacinthe. This modular, multipurpose structure will enable researchers to reproduce breeding conditions for small herds.

Each breeding unit will be able to test vaccines and probiotics on five cows or 25 hogs at a time, i.e., a miniature breeding operation. But what is interesting is that these mini-farms will be under close surveillance, since the researchers can control feeding, physiological and hygienic conditions, as well as innovative engineering concepts. The building will be designed to conduct experiments in different breeding conditions. For example, a grating floor will be placed over a slurry, as in most commercial farms. Then the conditions will be changed so as to improve the animal’s well-being. For example, the unit will be equipped with an innovative system to separate and automatically evacuate solid and liquid waste, as well as an odour control device. “We know that vaccines and probiotics are less effective in an environment where the animal is stressed. But just telling the producer this is not enough. You have to be able to show him concretely what it can do for him,” Mr. Girard explains. Researchers who will have access to the building include members of the Research Group on Pork Infectuous Diseases (GREMIP) and the Department of Biomedicine at the Université de Montréal, partners from the Department of Soils and Agro-food Engineering at Laval University and engineers from the Institute for Research and Development of the Agro-Environment (IRDA) located at St-Hyacinthe. Two priority axes of research have been identified: reduction of waste at the source and protection of the environment.