Farm evaluation program on swine health management to control piglets' diarrhea

돼지 설사병 방제 양돈장 위생관리 프로그램 개발

Piglets' diarrhea is one of the major causes of economic loss in Korean swine industry. To prevent this serious and persistant problem, we have developed systemic farm evaluation and analysis program. The program consists of the checklist and the computerized program. The items of the checklist are selected on the basis of various causative factors related with the piglets' diarrhea including sanitational status, nutritional management, or farm environment. The checklist is composed of 30 items including 6 factors on facility, 8 factors on environment, 6 factors on nutrition and 10 factors on sanitation, respectively. Minimum 1 to maximum 10 points was assigned to each item depending on level or status of farm. The scores calculated by sum of points obtained from each item could find out the problems which the farm was confronted with. To investigate the applicability of a program 150 swine farms raising over 500 heads were selected from 7 provinces throughout the country and surveyed. There were significant correlations between the piglets' diarrhea and the scores of the checklist. Based on above results we revised the checklist which consisted of 22 items including 5 factors on facility, 7 factors on environment, 3 factors on nutrition and 7 factors on sanitation. After that we composed a computerized diagram out of each point of an item which showed and indicated weak factors to be improved promptly. Our present study suggested that this newly established swine farm evaluation program would be a very efficient way to find out the problems and support the systemic control program of the piglets' diarrhea for swine farms.