Beep... Beep... Beep... BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!!

That's the sound of a Renco Preg-tone II Pregnosticator/Ultrasound handheld telling you that you're about to be a grandma...  These little handhelds are awesome.  If you're anything like me, you're a nut when it comes to looking at piggy vulvas at day 21.  These handy tools allow you to check on day 18 to see if they're going to come into heat or not, so you can order semen for AI or make arrangements for a boar.  On Day 30, they're 100 percent accurate at detecting pregnancy.

For about 250 dollars, you too can be saved from scrutinizing the 'business end' of your gilts and sows, for hours on end, wondering if it's getting bigger, or pinker, or anything out of the ordinary.  http://www.rencocorp.com/preg_tone_ii.htm


So, a little over a month ago, we AI'd our two sows.  Today, we were thrilled when we touched our PT2 to them, and it was screaming a solid tone.  It didn't matter if we pointed that thing at their shoulder (like you're supposed to), or between their ears, or at their back, or anywhere.  It was screaming that they were both pregnant the minute I touched it to them.  The three gilts that we knew were open also sounded open, with persistent beeping.  Why did I check them?  I couldn't believe how quickly and absolutely the sows toned.  But there's no denying it.  They's preggers!

So, for the matchups, here's what we are expecting in about 3 months:

Porkchop (Fame Monster x Hamp)  has been bred to Gopher Nation 88-1 (Stinger 8-4 x Fame Monster).  We're expecting black belteds out of this litter.  It's a Fame Monster on Fame Monster, so we're curious to see what we get, but should be fairly consistent in type.

Porkchop:  Porkchop was bred by Gary and Tina Tuckwiller of Asbury, WV.  She placed 3rd in her class at the West Virginia State Fair in 2012.  She has been the mother to several class winners and top placers at the Greenbrier/Monroe County Youth Livestock Show in 2013, and a 2nd in class at the 2013 West Virginia State Fair:

Gopher Nation 88-1:  Gopher Nation 88-1 was bred by the University of Minnesota, hence his funny name.  He is currently housed at North Iowa Boar Stud http://www.omnitelcom.com/~nibs/index.htm, and they donate $5 of every vial to the Randy Morris Memorial Award:

Fame Monster, who is the father to Porkchop, and sired the mother of Gopher Nation 88-1, is housed at Lean Value Sires http://www.leanvaluesires.com.  He was the $55,000 Champion Crossbred Boar at the 2010 STC and sired the 2012 Indiana State Fair Champion Barrow, amongst others.  Here he is:

In Porkchop's last litter, she weaned 12.  This will be her third parity, and we're hoping that it turns out to be one of her best!

Calyse (War Fare x York) has been bred to Blue Genes 69-35 (Blue Blood x Monster 52-4).  We are expecting an assorted colored litter, with hopefully some blues, some belteds, some white, and oddly enough, some red.  I'm pretty jazzed about the pairing.

Calyse:  Calyse was bred by Ray Showpigs http://www.rayshowpigs.com in Cabery, IL.  Her mother was class winner at the NJSA Summer Spectacular in 2011.  She has raised a Heavyweight Cross Class Winner at the IL State Fair.  Also Calyse raised the 2nd in class behind the Reserve Grand Champion Market Hog at the Douglas County Fair in MO.  Calyse came to us by peculiar means.  We bought her as a bred sow, from a fellow who had used her, only it turned out she wasn't bred.  Sadly, she wasn't cycling either.  She had large abscesses on her rear legs, was lame, had a UTI and was severely underweight.  We got her in the dark, so when we got home after driving 19 hours, and got to see her in the light, we were surprised and disappointed.  After several courses of antibiotics, urinalysis, changes in her diet, supplements, tests and medical intervention, it was a true miracle when we managed to get her cycling again, almost a year after her last cycle.  We were told it would be truly a miracle if she conceived, but we wanted to try.  We're not a big operation, maybe because we don't give up on animals that probably need more intervention and care than it should take.  It's probably because we started with dog shows, and you would not believe the lengths we dog people go to when it comes to keeping our animals alive and healthy, even if it means we'll never get a litter out of them.  Or maybe it's because I have my own battles that made her circumstances that much more wounding.  

Blue Genes 69-35:   Blue Genes was bred by Sieren Swine Farm  http://www.sierenswinefarm.com in Keota, IA, owned and operated by Jayme and Scott Sieren.  His sire, Blue Blood, was the Champion Cross boar at the 2011 WPX.  Blue Genes placed 4th in his class at the National Swine Fall Classic in Duncan, OK, and was purchased by North Iowa Boar Stud for $6,500.  

I can't vouch for this litter with regards to fertility, but Calyse had two litters of 7 and 9 before she stopped cycling, so I don't think fertility was a problem initially.  Only time will tell.  Irregardless, she's trim, healthy, sassy and pregnant right now, so thank God, our veterinarians and the staff at Virginia Tech, my wonderfully supportive and tolerant husband, and the Almighty Dollar for making it happen.  

War Fare was bred by Edwards Family Genetics in Dublin, TX http://www.edwardsfamilygenetics.com  and was housed at Mike Fischer Showpigs http://www.fischershowpigs.com in Iowa Park, TX.  

Blue Blood was bred by W-D Swine Farm http://www.wdswinefarm.com in Turlock, CA, and is housed at Upperhand Genetics http://www.upperhandgenetics.com in Huntington, IN.  

We also bred our Hereford gilt, Lucy (Sycamore, bred by Cook Farms, Hillsboro, OH) to Hershel at Shipley Swine http://www.shipleyswine.com for a summer litter.  Will update to let you all know if she took or not.  Cross your fingers!!!  We had hoped to have a litter out of this paring this January, but Lucy got injured by being jumped by one of our much larger sows, and her placenta detached, causing us to lose the litter.  She's separated this time.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure -- Benjamin Franklin

Good ol' Benny there had some great advice, though it is rarely heard today.  He was actually referring to fire prevention, but for near 150 years it would become the motto of mothers, doctors, and farmers looking to explain the practice of preventative care.

I'm sure you've all heard it before, but probably from someone 70 years and older.  A grandparent, an elderly neighbor, someone from a generation that was born during that time period.  They heard it their entire lives, as they were kept home from school for fear of contracting small pox or polio, both illnesses that had a terrifying rate of contagion.  They heard it from their grandmothers who were soaping their tomato plants, and grandfathers who were burning the loosestrife. Their doctors would say that an apple a day would keep the doctor at bay.  It was a period where cures weren't advanced enough to prevent disease and illness from overcoming the sick, so prevention really was the only method a person could use to survive.  They had no idea at the time that what they were actually doing was Bio-Security.

Then Louis Pasteur entered the scene in the late 19th century, and during the 1800's compulsory vaccination was all the rage across the country.  It wasn't until 1905 that the Supreme Court determined that it was unconstitutional.  Irregardless, at that point, the 'ounce of prevention' had turned to medicine, instead of bio-security.  In the 20th century, as quickly as diseases were discovered, a vaccine or treatment was also discovered, and people began to think that if there was a bug, there'd be a pesticide to kill it.  If there was a virus, there'd be a vaccine to avoid it.  If there was an infection, there'd be an antibiotic to cure it.  If there was a weed, there was an herbicide to eradicate it.

During the Victorian period, chemicals really became mainstream, with your local Pharmacist able to concoct anything and everything you could possibly need, from mercury treatments for syphilis, to blood letting to correct an imbalance of humors.  In addition to this sort of treatment protocol change, farmers were experimenting with chemical fertilizers in place of good old fashioned green manures like mangelwurtzels and manure.  It was a dawn of a new age, and as with anything that is new, mankind scrambled for the latest and greatest.

However, with this idea that there was always a pill to fix what ails you, Bio-security practices fell by the wayside.  We became fearless.  So... when something devastating came along, and no cure was readily available, it left people scared, terrified, confused, and angry.  Why weren't their doctors able to prescribe something to cure AIDS?  Why weren't doctors able to prescribe something to cure SARS?  How come we don't have something that cures CANCER?  Ebola?  Lupus?  Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease?  As these diseases have come to light, the cry for a cure has grown louder, but no cure exists yet.  What has the world prescribed for people who might contract these diseases?

Prevention.   Avoid unprotected sex, don't travel to certain areas, better diet and exercise to avoid cancer, drink bottled water when on vacation, get a blood test and don't marry someone who has the same recessive gene for CJ disease...  Thank goodness that prevention is coming in vogue again.  But are we too late?  Have our behaviors doomed us to a downward spiral, especially when it comes to PEDv?

I bet you were wondering when we'd get to something piggy related, lol!  Bio-security practices are being treated as something new-fangled in the farming industry, when in all aspects, it practically developed there, with Rinderpest probably being the most notable.  Cattle plague was easily transmittable through contaminated water and air.  Farmers instituted a variety of bio-security practices from eradicating infected herds to strict isolation of healthy herds.  No known vaccination existed that was truly 100 percent effective, and from before 3,000BC to 1999AD, intense Bio-security was really the only surefire method of keeping naive herds from contracting it.  They started working on a vaccine in the 1700's, and it took nearly 200 years to come up with one that truly worked.  The last known Rinderpest case was in Kenya in 2001, and in 2010, the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) declared that we were free of the disease on a global scale.

200 years.  It took 200 years to develop a vaccine.  Let's think about this for a moment.  Vaccine development hasn't really changed all that much.  The processes are very similar now to what they were when vaccines first came onto the scene.  Identify a virus.  Isolate virus.  Duplicate virus.  Identify antibodies in survivors.  Isolate antibodies.  Duplicate antibodies.  Develop vehicle.  Combine vehicle with antibodies.  Inoculate naive sample.  Test.  Success goes towards production.  Failure goes back to step 1.

Even if you look at what most would consider Modern Medicine, say... 1950 and up, many of the biggest diseases still have no known cure or vaccine.  Prevention has been relabeled from a pill or shot to avoidance.  Bio-Security has become the prevention of today.

But... PEDv is a big deal!  And there are plenty of cases!   And plenty of survivors!   And plenty of antibodies!   And plenty of affected cases!  Why don't we have a vaccine yet?

Well, a few different reasons.  One, say a University makes a breakthrough with some aspect of the virus.  They're on that threshold of a major discovery and potentially a cure.  Another University is also on that same threshold.  If they shared information, someone would for certain develop that cure...  But which one?  Both Universities have invested time, money and effort in developing this cure, but only one will be known as the school that discovered it.  Keeping this information close to breast is the best way they can figure to guarantee that their people get the credit.  This slows down the process for everyone.  Greed.

Another reason is that it's really difficult to stem the spread of an epidemic when every Tom, Dick and Harry is out there buying pigs and selling pigs without any concern for bio-security practices and travel logs.  "Yeah, I delivered a truckload of 150 pigs from Nebraska to Ohio the other day."  "Where'd those pigs originate?"   "I dunno, just picked them up and trucked them."  Greed.

SwineID is a program being worked on by the National Pork Board that would grant premises an identification number, and each pig would have accurate animal tracing through timely and accurate record keeping of its movements by producers.  It's still elective at the moment.

Another reason is the, "I'm in this for ME," mentality.  I've heard it time and time again this season.  People are flat out unwilling to source local pigs from known PEDv negative farms, take a bit of a hit this year showing their animals, all in the name of ethical bio-security practices.  They would rather risk everything to go into states that are PEDv positive, to farms that may or may not be affected, crossing areas that may or may not have the virus, playing the may or may not game, to get a pig they feel they can really compete with, all so they can get a big purple ribbon.  Folks, that ribbon costs 3 dollars.  In fact, you can buy a 4 foot long rosette for 12 dollars.  Any color you want.  Is that ribbon really worth risking the health and future of your herd?  What about the breeding program of everyone else?  Is that ribbon worth it?  Sadly, for many, it is.   Greed.

Greed is the primary reason it's going to take 5 years or more to develop a vaccine and cure, instead of 12 months.

Bio-security is the only thing we know that works.  Stringent, unwavering bio-security.  I'm not a gambler.  Some people enjoy gambling.  They enjoy that thrill of throwing the dice and seeing if the come up winning or snake eyes.  I'm not one of those people.  There will be a lot of those people at the fair though.  The problem is, their losses will be everyone's losses.  I pray it's not yours.

'Til next time, Carbolic Acid.  That's goodbye in any language!