You can establish a high health status herd by building a new unit on a greenfield site or by depopulating your present farm, cleaning and disinfecting it thoroughly and repopulating it with pregnant gilts from a DHHS herd. Meanwhile you should consider carefully the location of the farm to be populated to decide what level of high health status would be appropriate. Then you should decide on the source of the new stock together with what measures you should adopt to prevent your new herd becoming contaminated.

Freedom from the main infectious diseases is a major contribution to the efficiency of production and to profitability. Thus the biosecurity measures that are taken to prevent new infections entering your herd, are of paramount importance.

The most important factor in biosecurity is the location. A secure location is one of very low pig density well away from any other pig herd, preferably in hilly or mountainous country and/or on the sea coast. If your farm is in such a location then the most important factor in biosecurity is a well designed and carefully operated loading bay particularly for loading slaughter pigs. You also need to control visiting people. If there are wild boar in the vicinity a stout perimeter fence is needed.

Of course, like most pig farmers, you may have no choice in your location because your farm is already up and running. With the help of your veterinarian, you should critically review the location your pig farm is in to assess what the risks are and what health status your herd can maintain. The worse your location the more important it is for you to take strict biosecurity measures.

The checklist in Fig.2-21 will help in determining deficiencies. Fig.2-22 indicates the diseases that you should be able to maintain your herd free from and those diseases that are more difficult to keep out.