Episode 36: Small Swine Producers and Veterinarians Grant Update with Casey Zangaro

On this episode of the Maine Farmcast, Colt visited the National Swine Education and Outreach Conference in Kansas City, Missouri where he got the chance to sit down with fellow swine enthusiast, Casey Zangaro, Swine Extension Educator for Michigan State University.

Extension agents from Michigan, Maine, Iowa, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania worked together to acquire a grant from the National Pork Board to gather information about small scale swine producers and veterinarians from across the country. Through surveys and focus groups. Over the course of this podcast, we will highlight some of the most interesting concerns highlighted by producers and veterinarians.

The objectives of the National Pork Board’s Swine Education and Outreach Grant program are:

  • Drive state and regional execution of national producer priorities, as identified in the annual industry planning process.
  • Facilitate greater swine/pork education reach for under-served states and producers.
  • Increase interaction with all segments of pork production and/or operation types.
  • Enhance collaboration and coordination among industry, research, and Extension nationwide.
  • Support Swine Outreach and Education Professionals as a critical part of a successful national system executed at the local level.
  • Leverage expertise of Extension with Checkoff funding.
  • Strengthen the partnership between the National Pork Board and Swine Education and Outreach Professionals.
  • Advance and enhance the workforce pipeline for industry, research and Extension.
  • Expand new and alternative platforms for education deployment.

Episode Resources

Results of the grant will be published soon, and we will include a link when those are ready.

Automated Transcript

Colt Knight: 00:29

Welcome to the Maine Farmcast. I am your host, Dr. Colt Knight, associate extension professor and state livestock specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. And today, I am joined by Casey Zangaro, swine extension educator from Michigan State University. And this week, we are at the National Swine Education and Outreach Convention in Kansas City, Missouri. We are both here presenting on our recent grant we received from the National Port Checkoff.

Colt Knight: 01:02

Casey, could you maybe tell us a little bit about yourself, and then we can talk about the results of our grant.

Casey Zangaro: 01:11

Yep. So, yep, my name is Casey. I currently reside in Michigan. I’ve only been there for six and a half years. I originally grew up in Kansas on a feedlot row crop cattle farm, which is a third generation farm as well.

Casey Zangaro: 01:27

I ventured into alpacas for about 10 years with my grandpa and I’m third generation horse rider as well. And I still keep those, hay burners as one of my lovely hobbies. From Kansas, I traveled over to Northwest Missouri State University where I graduated with a pre vet animal science degree, made my way up to South Dakota state for my master’s degree under Dr. Tofuko Woyengo, studying swine nutrition in particular DDGs and their effect on grow Finnish pigs. And while I was there, I managed their brand new back then off-site, wean to finish barn as well.

Casey Zangaro: 02:10

And then again, six and a half years later, here I am doing this grant and lovely extension work in Michigan.

Colt Knight: 02:17

Yeah. So the National Pork Checkoff 2 years ago, with the advisory group came up with this idea that they should spend some of that checkoff money on applied research for swine producers. And last year, they announced the pilot program of this grant, and they were awarding $1,100,000. If you listen to our second or third episode, I interviewed Dr. Brett Kaysen, vice president of the Port Checkoff, about these grants. Well, Casey here, decided to take the initiative and be the lead author and, came up with an idea, and we submitted it, and it was funded.

Colt Knight: 03:04

Maybe you would like to share a little bit about that grant.

Casey Zangaro: 03:08

Yeah. So this grant is focusing on small swine herd veterinarians and small herd, swine producers. And the way we, as a group within this grant, defines small as an independent. It’s not within an integrated system within the swine industry.

Colt Knight: 03:27

Or every single swine producer in Maine.

Casey Zangaro: 03:31

Yep. All of Maine counts in that.

Colt Knight: 03:34

They didn’t actually think that we counted as small. They classified us as niche or micro swine producers. Micro. Yeah.

Casey Zangaro: 03:43

Yep. So Colt is one of the few that I’ve, dragged along in this grant. I also have Dr. Beth Hines from Penn State University. Dr. Laura Greiner from Iowa State University.

Casey Zangaro: 03:56

Dr. Benny Mote from University of Nebraska Lincoln. And then I also brought in, John LaPorte, who is a Michigan State educator as well. And he does farm business management, specializing in small farms. And so from that, you can tell, if you know anything about pigs, Iowa and Nebraska have a pretty dense population of them. Michigan and Penn State are about in the middle, and then we got Maine.

Colt Knight: 04:22

If you’re not used to Iowa, there are 7 or 8 pigs for every person Yep. In the state of Iowa.

Casey Zangaro: 04:28

Yep. There’s more animals in Nebraska and Iowa than there are people. Yep. And so we really wanted to look at the knowledge and education gaps, both in on the producer side and on the veterinarian side. And the best way to do that, unfortunately, is through a survey that we put out online and then we’ve mailed some, we’ve given some out in person.

Casey Zangaro: 04:54

Just any way we could get it. We made social media posts with QR links. We just tried to get it all out there as much as we could. We only had about 4 months for this, survey and this grant was about 10 months total. So we really were pushing the boundaries of what we can and cannot do within a year, grant wise at least.

Casey Zangaro: 05:14

So, the grant was pretty successful. We got about 12 states, about 200 survey responses just from the producer side alone. The vets were harder. We had about 9 states with about 20, 25 responses. Surprise not really surprising, just kind of disappointing we couldn’t, didn’t have more time to filter out those and find them.

Casey Zangaro: 05:38

We also did a focus group at World Pork Expo in June. We had about 8 producers and about 6 veterinarians. They were in separate focus groups and we had a series of questions. We gave them and, filtered out the feedback from that. It’s very interesting, all the tangents we got on pork producers, swine herd, veterinarians.

Casey Zangaro: 06:03

They love to talk. They love to talk about their experiences. And, yeah, it was a good time out there. And then from all of that, we’re hoping to make educational materials, via videos, this podcast, other podcasts, and written articles.

Colt Knight: 06:21

Mhmm. And I was kind of amazed at some of the results that we got back. And some of the results, I thought, yeah. That that sounds about right. And then, some of the results, you know, like, I didn’t know that.

Colt Knight: 06:35

Yep. And some of the things I think one of the glaring things that came out of both the focus group and the paper surveys were just the lack of access to veterinary care for small scale producers. And that’s not just a main issue. That is a countrywide issue at the moment

Casey Zangaro: 06:56

Yep.

Colt Knight: 06:58

That even veterinarians were debating on how we should address that issue.

Casey Zangaro: 07:03

Yep. They’re well aware of that. We have this issue. I know it was hit hard in the focus groups that some of these are going to their cattle vet. Some of these producers are going to small animal vets.

Casey Zangaro: 07:15

It’s whoever they can find that could potentially help them with their issues that they have with their pigs.

Colt Knight: 07:21

I guess you should take a step back. You know, kind of one of the reasons that we’re really talking about this is few years back, they passed the thing called the veterinary feed directive, which limited the use of antibiotics. And as we all know, as of last year, we can no longer buy over the counter antibiotics. So a lot of the things that small scale producers took care of on their own, those drugs are no longer available without a prescription from a veterinarian.

Casey Zangaro: 07:51

Yep. It really reduced, you can’t just go into TSC and buy Ivermectin anymore for pigs. You have to have that script from a veterinarian. And along with those restrictions, you had to have a veterinarian that has been to your place, knows your herd, preferably has worked with a biosecurity plan with you and has worked with you before with your herd health plan as well, which is great in theory. It works very well when it can work.

Casey Zangaro: 08:21

The problem is with those smaller producers, they don’t have that access to the vets that are comfortable around pigs. You can get your beef fed out there, but he’s used to beef and dairy. He’s not used to those pigs, and he doesn’t understand the level of biosecurity and health issues that these pigs can have versus what’s most dairy and beef cattle can. So

Colt Knight: 08:44

Yeah. So I was really surprised by the answers from the veterinarians on that survey. I guess I really wasn’t super surprised from the answers from the producers, but I work with producers on a day to day basis. So I think I probably have a a good feel of what their opinions are on certain topics and which practices they use and don’t use. But maybe we could go through some of those survey results and some of the standouts and what’s important and then maybe how we can address some of those issues in the future.

Casey Zangaro: 09:16

Yep. So most of the survey, just a quick rundown of some of the questions was we did not ask for specific addresses. We got as close as county and state, and you didn’t really have to put that down if you didn’t want to.Colt Knight: 09:30

Yeah. This was anonymous.Casey Zangaro: 09:31

Yep. Yep. We talked looked into how many pigs per year do you usually have on your farm? What’s your sole and primary purpose of having those pigs? So we had show pigs, we had commercial, we had freezer.

Casey Zangaro: 09:44

We even had a spot for agritourism on there. And then we had a, just general interest in pigs, which I was kind of surprised how many we got with that as well. Looked at, do you have a vet? Do you work with a vet? How often is the vet out there?

Casey Zangaro: 10:02

Do you use antibiotics? How do you use them, such as in feed, in water, needle injection? We looked at body condition score. Do you, look at your biosecurity plan? Do you adhere to biosecurity?

Casey Zangaro: 10:18

What vaccinations you use? How often do you have routine vet care and why? And then we went into more of the feed side. So how do you feed your horses? Is it a complete oh, horses.

Casey Zangaro: 10:34

Yeah. Yeah. How do you feed your pigs? Is it a completely rationed bag feed? Like you can go into a, farm tractor supply store and buy it.

Casey Zangaro: 10:44

Do you make some of it? Do you make all of it? Do you feed waste? Do you feed, byproducts? And then, of course, the last question is, what information would you like from the swine experts?

Colt Knight: 10:57

So biosecurity and I know a lot of folks get tired of hearing the term biosecurity, especially if you got, like, an agritourism type farm or you’re a small farm and and you’re not really well versed in biosecurity or you don’t think you need it as much. But we do see a lot of disease outbreaks and those farms that that do not practice biosecurity. We see a lot of vulnerabilities for potential disease outbreaks and the transference of disease from farm to farm, with the lack of biosecurity practices. But I think most people were aware of what biosecurity is, and it seemed what was it? About half actually practiced biosecurity on their swine farms.

Casey Zangaro: 11:46

Yep. Yeah. It was kind of a surprising number for how much we beat a dead horse over biosecurity. I know when I do biosecurity talks, it’s the glazed over eyes, but then the survey is telling me I need to be a little bit more forceful.

Colt Knight: 12:03

Yeah. When when we look at when we go to farm visits or we we give talks and we answer phone calls about problems on swine farms, a lot of those stem from a lack of biosecurity, a lack of vaccination protocols, which should be part of your biosecurity plan. But when we ask people, they they they’re just tired of hearing the term biosecurity. They don’t wanna attend another biosecurity training. But the results we see indicate that the biosecurity should probably play a more prominent role

Casey Zangaro: 12:39

Yep.

Colt Knight: 12:39

In someone’s farm than than a lot of times it actually does.

Casey Zangaro: 12:43

Yeah. I try to hide it, when I’m doing especially in the winter months, I’ll do a lot of show pig and 4 h pig, webinars and conferences. And I tell them about overall herd health and human health. I try to tie both of those in before I start using the word biosecurity. And then with the smaller farmers and the fair pigs, I try to emphasize a good, better, best method.

Casey Zangaro: 13:12

So, what you’re doing now, is it good enough to not get your pick sick? If it’s not, start small. Maybe we need to just switch out your boots before you go out there and have a dedicated clothing. Maybe you need to wash your equipment before and after you use it. And then from there, what are some better things we can start achieving towards?

Casey Zangaro: 13:36

And then the best is, obviously, like, everything is sanitized. No clothes go off the farm. Pigs don’t leave the farm. If you go and visit your friend’s pigs, you have so much downtime. And understanding the quarantine concept, too, if you bring your pigs back.

Casey Zangaro: 13:52

So, I try to build up to it, when I’m talking to the smaller people who don’t, who automatically think biosecurity is a big system integrated issue, and it’s not. It’s every animal, every person issue, because pigs are are zoonotic disease animals. So you can bring it in just as much as they can give you something.

Colt Knight: 14:13

Yeah. And we just posted a, podcast on biosecurity with, with the state livestock specialist, Carol Delaney from the Department of Ag and Conservation and Forestry. So if you’d like to learn more about biosecurity, please check out that episode. But some of the other results of this survey were and this one surprised me is how few veterinarians and producers use the body condition scoring system to evaluate the overall nutrition and health of their animals. Now this is a practice that is free and easy to do.

Colt Knight: 14:48

We body condition score pigs on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being about to die, and then 5 is like butterball turkey or marshmallow man, you know, way up there. We want our pigs, you know, generally around that 3 to 3 and a half range on the body condition score. That way, they’re not skinny. And then towards approaching winter, we like them to be a little heavier, that 3 and a half, maybe even closer to 4.

Casey Zangaro: 15:16

Yep.

Colt Knight: 15:16

So they can get through that cold winter better. But we don’t want them any fatter than that if they’re gonna be in the reproductive herd because then the reproduction suffers.

Casey Zangaro: 15:26

Yep. About the only time I tell people you wanna force out is when it’s about to become a very hard winter and right before farrowing, just because if you lose too much weight after farrowing, it’s very hard for them to get back into their cycle. But yes, understanding the body condition scoring system is a super simple tool that I think a lot of people just overlook. Even vets nowadays, just they they just don’t think about it, and it’s super easy. It’s way easier to see if your pig is starting to drop off late and catch it before you have to use a vet or find a vet.

Colt Knight: 16:04

I mean, that’s the trick. Right? You need to periodically body condition score your animals. If you’ve got a lot, you can average that score together together and just get one number. If you got a few animals, you can keep your records and keep your individual scores.

Colt Knight: 16:20

And you look from week to week or every 2 weeks, and if that body condition score is going up, you know they’re gaining weight. If it’s going down, though, we know something’s wrong, Whether it’s nutrition, environment, parasites, health, something is going wrong.

Casey Zangaro: 16:38

Mhmm.

Colt Knight: 16:39

And if we catch it within that week to week or biweekly period, we can easily course correct before we have a major crash.

Casey Zangaro: 16:48

Yep. Pigs go up and down much faster than most livestock species do, so you can usually see it and catch it pretty fast. Again, it’s going to be social, environmental, or physical issues. So, did you just bring in a new herd and this one’s losing weight and now you’re noticing, is it even eating? Is it getting pushed out?

Casey Zangaro: 17:12

Simple things like that all the way up to, does it have a parasite? Do we have to get a vet out here? It’s just the simple things that you can catch quicker with a body condition score system.

Colt Knight: 17:22

And that’s that’s something I see a lot of in Maine, is internal parasite issues because most of our pigs are raised outdoors or semi outdoors in Maine. And we don’t have the internal parasite problems that they do in the Southern United States with pigs. You know, those folks are deworming pigs, like, every 3 weeks.

Casey Zangaro: 17:40

Yep.

Colt Knight: 17:41

And so when I first moved to Maine, we dewormed our pigs, like, every 6 months at best. Yeah. We had a really terrible wet year last year, and everyone was getting, internal parasites. And on my personal herd, I had to start going to every 2 months deworming my pigs. But a lot of times when I do farm visits or people tell me that their pigs aren’t gaining weight or they’re losing weight, the feed efficiency is terrible, it’s almost always internal parasites.

Colt Knight: 18:12

Yep. And if you were just to simply monitor the body condition score of your animals, when you started noticing that going down, that would be a trigger. Do I need to check for internal parasites? Yep.

Casey Zangaro: 18:25

Yeah. And usually, if it’s gonna be an internal issue or a medical issue, they’re also gonna have other signs. Like, they’re gonna be lethargic. They’re gonna have, water coming out of their eyes, and you’re going to see them get even more unthrifty and hairy. And if you’re starting to notice that sooner, you can catch it that much quicker.

Casey Zangaro: 18:44

I know this last winter, we didn’t have a hard freeze in Michigan. So, I was telling all of my show pick people, get some deworming. Also, get them some tick relief. Because there was no hard frost, so all those tick eggs live throughout the winter, and I was still getting calls through the show season. Hey.

Casey Zangaro: 19:07

I have ticks. What do I need to do? Hey. My pigs are having worming issues. What do I need to do?

Casey Zangaro: 19:13

I need to get them to fair

Colt Knight: 19:15

And ticks generally get on the crevices of pigs

Casey Zangaro: 19:19

Yep.

Colt Knight: 19:19

In between their toes

Casey Zangaro: 19:20

Soft skin.

Colt Knight: 19:21

Armpits, right behind their ear. You know, not not so much like your dogs that usually get them, like, on the inside of the ear or sometimes right on the back of their head. Generally speaking, most of your ticks are in on those soft areas on the pigs, which are hidden.

Casey Zangaro: 19:37

Yep.

Colt Knight: 19:37

So you really have to look for them.

Casey Zangaro: 19:39

Yeah. I recommend starting with the soft skin because the tick’s gonna try to find the point of least resistance, which is gonna be your your soft skin on your underbelly and your wrinkles of your legs, your inside your ears, near the snout

Colt Knight: 19:52

Mhmm.

Casey Zangaro: 19:52

In the lips. Yep.

Colt Knight: 19:54

Yep. Right there. What are some of the other things that we noticed that stood out on some of these surveys?

Casey Zangaro: 20:01

I’ve noticed there was a lot of health issues for the producer side of lameness, respiratory, reproductive issues. And again, some of this can be done by a body condition scoring.

Colt Knight: 20:16

Proper vaccination scarves.

Casey Zangaro: 20:18

Vaccinations. Making sure that where you have your pigs, there is nothing to physically hurt them because a pig is just like a child. If it’s nice and shiny, they’re gonna go and play with it and probably hurt themselves with it. And so a lot of the times I get called out for lameness and I pick up the pig’s foot because they never thought about that, and there’s a nail stuck in it.

Colt Knight: 20:41

Mhmm.

Casey Zangaro: 20:42

And if we’re lucky, it hasn’t abscessed and passed over yet.

Colt Knight: 20:45

Yeah. So a lot of our our pigs in Maine, like I said, are raised outdoors. We have really rocky soils

Casey Zangaro: 20:51

Mhmm.

Colt Knight: 20:51

That can cause a lot of issues. And genetic selection Yep. And picking animals that have really good straight stout legs without any confirmation defects really helps prevent those lameness issues. Proper nutrition really helps prevent those lameness issues, and then that in generally will increase the longevity of your reproductive herd reproductive herd and improve the feed efficiency of your your growing pigs even. If they’re not if they’re lame and sore and hurt, they’re not gonna gain weight.

Casey Zangaro: 21:28

They’re not gonna have any

Colt Knight: 21:30

And the other pigs will pick on them.

Casey Zangaro: 21:31

Yep. They’re gonna have any sort of I need to get up and go eat or drink or

Colt Knight: 21:36

Mhmm.

Casey Zangaro: 21:37

Do anything. And so, yeah, lameness is something that can be prevented, and sometimes it just happens. Animals are just animals. I do recommend

Colt Knight: 21:49

So a couple of the other things that that stood out were respiratory issues and reproductive issues. Now reproductive issues can be linked to nutrition, their environment, or pathogens, which a lot of times could be easily prevented with proper vaccination schedules.

Casey Zangaro: 22:08

Yep.

Colt Knight: 22:09

And proper vaccination storage.

Casey Zangaro: 22:13

Yes.

Colt Knight: 22:13

Most Checking those expiration dates, checking the bottles, make sure there’s not any black spots growing on the inside of there. And and the more pigs that you acquire and and I notice this happens a lot in Maine. Folks will start off 1 pig, 2 pigs. They get away without vaccinating for a long time because there’s not a whole lot of biosecurity risk. You know, there were no pigs on the property, so we don’t have, like, things inherently living in the ground.

Colt Knight: 22:40

Then maybe you’re not a show person, so you’re not you’re not going back and forth and bringing other pig pathogens on. Then you start selling more pork. You need to add some more pigs. You start getting 3, 4 sows or more, and then all of a sudden, it hits. Bam.

Colt Knight: 22:57

You get a disease that affects either reproduction or just the general health of the animal. Mhmm. And you abort all your litters or you get all stillborn litters or they just refuse to get pregnant. And, you know, some folks will will fight that for a year or 2 and feed those animals, and and the animals are essentially sterile at that point.

Casey Zangaro: 23:18

Yeah. Yeah. So reproduction, you usually don’t think about the other end of the animal, right? What they’re eating. Mycotoxins can really affect how, any system inside of a pig works.

Casey Zangaro: 23:34

And there’s, it’s called zearalenone and it’s, nicknamed Zon. And it’s a mold on the corn that’s once it’s harvest and it’s ground up into the pig feed will actually disrupt the reproductive cycle of sows. And a lot of people don’t think about about their feed having that type of an issue.

Colt Knight: 23:53

And mycotoxins is one of the number one reasons we do not recommend that we feed haylage or silage to pigs. You know, if it was clean, your mature animals could could consume that. Your growing pigs aren’t gonna do too well on on fibrous feed, but your your mature animals would. But they really high chance of getting mycotoxins or even worse botulism.

Casey Zangaro: 24:17

Yep. Yeah. So I know a lot of the smaller Michigan ones here, and I I mentioned mycotoxins because we’ve been having a lot wetter corn go into the mills. And most of them are like, well, we’re paying the extra for the binder anyways. And that’s good as long as you know that, or you’re constantly checking and, sending your corn to the lab before it works.

Casey Zangaro: 24:40

But a lot of people are just assuming that the feed mill is good and that’s where it all starts. Or even if it’s mass produced feed. If you’re having issues, that’s something that off often gets overlooked. Mhmm.

Colt Knight: 24:56

So if if you’re new to pigs or you’ve been into pigs for a while and you’ve got questions, it’s always a good idea to reach out to your your county extension folks and and ask these questions. I know you guys are gonna call me and ask where can I find a veterinarian, And University of Maine does maintain a list of large animal veterinarians, but I’m if they’re not as easy to get, there’s not a lot of them? We have just a handful, and they’re they’re out there every day working. So they’re not just ignoring you. They’re busy, and it’s just tough to find access to veterinary care these days.

Casey Zangaro: 25:37

It really is. On the vet side of that survey, I noticed there is a high number of what do you see as a health issue in your clients with scours and diarrhea. And it was interesting because it didn’t really register high or even medium on the producer side. So I think there’s a disconnect there of what the producers notice as scours and diarrhea versus what the vets see when they go out to visit. Yeah.

Colt Knight: 26:01

And when it when it comes to that kind of stuff, I I I’ve noticed a lot of small scale and backyard or or homesteader type producers don’t give piglets iron shots. Piglets are born iron deficient, and you should give them an iron supplementation before they’re 5, 6 days old, because after that it doesn’t do any good. And so if they are born iron deficient and they are not supplemented with that extra iron, they will be immunocompromised not just short term, but for the rest of their life. And one of the things that comes along with that is the scouring Yep. And the respiratory diseases that you see a lot of times with those young piglets.

Colt Knight: 26:46

Sometimes folks just think that it’s just the weather changing, which can also cause scours and Yep.

Casey Zangaro: 26:51

And and

Colt Knight: 26:52

we get a lot of temperature fluctuations

Casey Zangaro: 26:54

and nutrition change if you change feeds, but it it could also be a health issue that you’ve missed. Yep.

Colt Knight: 27:00

Yeah. So, again, if you have questions, feel free to contact us. Yeah. We love talking about pigs.

Casey Zangaro: 27:08

Yes. We like helping you improve your herd, especially when it comes to the health of the pigs. It Yeah. Proves everybody’s life.

Colt Knight: 27:14

Yeah. We’ll be publishing the results of this survey, and, we would love to hear from you. So if you have questions, comments, concerns, about pig health, pig nutrition, raising pigs, send us an email at extension.farmcast@maine.edu. Casey, it’s been great sitting here talking to you.

Casey Zangaro: 27:41

It’s been fun. I like talking about all these challenges that us as extension people love to help with.

Colt Knight: 27:48

Mhmm. Alright. We’ll see everyone down the road and listen to the Maine Farmcast.

In complying with the letter and spirit of applicable laws and pursuing its own goals of diversity, the University of Maine System does not discriminate on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, transgender status, gender, gender identity or expression, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship status, familial status, ancestry, age, disability physical or mental, genetic information, or veterans or military status in employment, education, and all other programs and activities. The University provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities upon request. The following person has been designated to handle inquiries regarding non-discrimination policies: Director of Equal Opportunity, 5713 Chadbourne Hall, Room 412, University of Maine, Orono, ME  04469-5713, 207.581.1226, TTY 711 (Maine Relay System).