Effective Vaccination Programmes Offer Excellent Payback
CANADA - A Territory Manager with Zoetis says the payback on an effective vaccination programme can range from two to one to as much as seven to one, Bruce Cochrane writes.
27 April 2017
3 minute read
By: "Getting the most out of your vaccination and treatment protocols" was discussed this week as part of the Prairie Swine Centre's 2017 Manitoba Spring Producer Meeting.
Dennis Stevenson, a Territory Manager with Zoetis, says while producers may know how to do vaccination and have the theory and understanding of what they need, where theory relates to reality, barns have challenges and things can go wrong so you need to build a plan and you need to teach people to problem solve and identify the things that can get in the way.
Dennis Stevenson-Zoetis
You need to understand the immune system of the animal that you're working with so, in our case, it's the pigs, but only just the immune system of the pig, you need to understand the disease you're vaccinating for and the vaccines that you're using.
They don't all work the same and the diseases don't all work the same so all those key factors in understanding how that works and then it needs to be applied to a specific farm.
What works on my farm may not work your farm.
The principles remain the same on the majority of farms but the actual practice that gets into place to meet that principle may be very different.
That is affected by the people that you work with, that's affected by the facility that you have, your genetics, the challenges of disease.
My farm may have a certain disease that your farm doesn't have and I need to take into account, if I have multiple diseases that I'm fighting on my farm, how those timings all work together.
The principles hold true regardless but, as you get to your farm, the practices have to be modified.
Mr Stevenson says, depending on the disease, the individual facility and the number of diseases, the payback will vary.
In the example of Circovirus, he notes, a Kansas State University study showed at least a two to one payback on every farm, in farms that had significant challenges it could be seven to one but on average it would be four to one so when you spend the time to get it right it's a really good investment and it can hurt you if you don't.
