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How trace mineral nutrition is improving sow health, labor efficiency
58 Plays11 days ago
Zinpro discovery researcher Dr. Lucas Rodrigues explains how improving sow health through trace mineral nutrition can reduce staff burnout, lower turnover and strengthen return on investment across swine operations.
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Transcript
Introduction of Podcast and Sponsor
00:00:08
Speaker
Hi everyone, welcome to Feed Strategy Podcast. I'm your host, Jackie Remke, Editor-in-Chief of Watts Feed Brands. This edition of Feed Strategy Podcast is brought to you by Zinpro.
00:00:20
Speaker
For more than 50 years, Zinpro has improved the health and wellbeing of both animals and people as a pioneer in the research and development of performance trace minerals and innovative nutritional solutions.
00:00:33
Speaker
For more information, please visit Zinpro.com.
Dr. Lucas Rodriguez on Trace Mineral Nutrition
00:00:38
Speaker
Today we're joined by ZinPros discovery researcher, Dr. Lucas Rodriguez. He's here to explore how trace mineral nutrition is being used to improve sow health and labor efficiency.
00:00:51
Speaker
Hi Lucas, how are you today? Hi Jackie, I'm doing well, how are you doing? I'm doing great. Thank you so much for being here. And we'll just get right into it. But first, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? Yeah, sure. I'm originally from Brazil. I did vet school in Brazil. And then by third year of vet school, I started working with pigs.
00:01:12
Speaker
And then got a passion for nutrition. So I did a master's in nutrition, worked in Brazil as a field nutritionist for about three years. Thought it would be nice to see some snow. So I moved up to Canada, did my PhD there in kind of swine nutrition and health. And then in early 2022, I joined the R&D department at Zinpro as a researcher.
00:01:38
Speaker
Excellent.
Impact of Sow Health on Labor Efficiency
00:01:39
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Now, what role does sow health play in labor efficiency and ROI in swine operations today? Yeah, we started thinking more and more about this. So labor shortage is a global issue, I would say. So we're seeing these in the Americas and some parts of Europe as well. And sometimes when you think about the relationship between sow health and labor efficiency, it seems kind of a very distant relationship.
00:02:07
Speaker
But we're seeing that when you have more healthy cells, the daily work is kind of predictable, right? You have feeding, you have ferring checks, you have routine care. When disease pressure comes, you start seeing lesions, you start seeing stress, and all these stressors, they come into play at the same time. You kind of enter that firefighting mode, right? And that extra workload for the staff obviously create burnout. And in many situations will increase that staff turnover, right?
00:02:42
Speaker
That increase in staff turnover and well-being will directly impact your operational results. And if you're impacting your results, you're impacting your performance. roi So in the beginning, we thought that relationship between cell health and labor efficiency was not very direct, let's say, but we're seeing more and more that by improving cell health, we can definitely increase, in this case, decrease the staff turnover and improve the ah ROI of the operation.
Improving Labor Through Sow Longevity
00:03:13
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Does cell longevity play a role in improving ah roi and labor efficiency? I would say role. If we think every time a sow is replaced, you have the replacement of that sow, so a new guill will arrive at the operation. So you have replacement, you have acclimation, you have monitoring, and you have managing that guill until that guill is productive enough to stay in the herd.
00:03:41
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If you have sows more productive for more parodies, you kind of enter a stable cycle in your herd. And from a people standpoint, we need to think that more experienced sows, they're way easier to handle, right? So you have less troubleshooting on a day-to-day basis and you have less rework, I would say, for those experienced sows because they're staying in the herd longer.
00:04:11
Speaker
longevity in simple terms will improve that rhythm of the FAR, right? So you have less interruptions, you have a better environment for the staff because you don't have a lot of removals, you don't have a lot of rechecks, you don't have a lot of medical interventions, and obviously you're going to improve your output. So that's the tie between longevity, labor efficiency, and ah ROI.
Benefits of Trace Minerals on Sow Health
00:04:39
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Where can trace mineral nutrition have the greatest impact when it comes to herd health and labor demands? Well, from our experience, trace mineral nutrition can support three main areas, I would say.
00:04:52
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Number one, immune strength. Number two, feet and leg health. Number three, repro-performance. From an immune perspective, if you have more resilient animals,
00:05:05
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By consequence, you're going to have fewer sick sows and fewer sick piglets by improving their immune competence. Then you're going to have, from a farm perspective, less injections and fewer extra trips, let's say, to recheck sows, to recheck piglets.
00:05:26
Speaker
The second front, if you have stronger foot and stronger leg, you're gonna most likely reduce lameness. Lameness is the number one or number two cause of sow removal globally, right? On top of removals, you're gonna have less movement challenge, right? So it's not easy to handle sows with lameness.
00:05:47
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and we just identified the relationship between repro and lameness, you have less downstream negative effects on repro as well. And finally, if you improve your repro performance, that's generally tied to cells being healthier, right? So healthier cells will produce more and will require less hands-on interventions, let's say. That's why we believe that by supporting these three aspects, immune strength, feed and leg health, and repro-performance, trace mineral nutrition can definitely decrease direct or indirect labor-intensive interventions.
00:06:30
Speaker
Great
Measuring Trace Mineral Program Efficacy
00:06:31
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information. Now, how would you say that nutritionists can effectively measure and demonstrate the value of trace mineral programs. This will vary a little bit on a case-by-case scenario, but from our experience as well, I think the easiest and more effective way to do it is to connect changes directly between this new trace mineral program intervention with outcomes of interest, mostly related to repro and longevity, and track them over time. So you basically start with pretty simple before and after comparisons using few very clear and important metrics.
00:07:13
Speaker
Also, if lameness is a common issue, let's say adding a locomotion score and the colo-lesion score is extremely helpful because in many situations, this is the mechanism through which trace minerals, especially zinc, manganese, and copper will benefit the cell.
00:07:32
Speaker
And finally, bringing indirect metrics that will for sure impact the efficiency of the operation, right? Health events, staff turnover, staff well-being, is stability of the performance of the
Conclusion and Resources
00:07:48
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operation. One thing I would even emphasize is is that at Zimpro, we have some good resources for veterans and for nutritionists. People can definitely visit Zimpro.com and connect with their local representatives for more. And there is also a series of free eBooks that people can sign up.
00:08:07
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And these will contain information around our research, our novel initiatives, and even from a tech support perspective. Just as Lucas said, please visit zenpro.com forward slash swine for more Sal and Guilt resources and to sign up for their four-part free ebook series.
00:08:28
Speaker
Thanks again, Lucas, and thanks to you for tuning in. Thank you so much.