No single strategy will confer total protection. A well-orchestrated combination of various methods adjusted to a single production unit or system will be needed.

Frequently, diseases become established on a farm because we culture them.

Curiously, when I started to think about it, what I had considered as my number one mistake for most of my professional life became the fifth in importance.

Understanding water consumption and knowing the factors that can affect it, are important points in animal production and health.

This second part on AI stud management reviews the procedure for calculating sperm concentration and the elements that affect a correct assessment.

The impact of semen used for post-cervical AI is 2-3 times bigger than that used to produce cervical insemination doses; therefore, preparation of the doses should follow an even stricter control program.

Boar exposure time, duration and frequency, proper boar: gilt or sow ratio, exposure methods, hormones, …

This article explains the main preventive measures against App, focusing on the use of antimicrobials and vaccines.

This article is about the diagnosis of the infection caused by Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae (App) in acute, chronic or subclinical cases.

We recommend that producers pay more attention to gilts and sows that are at risk of increasing NPD. Situations of increased risk are described.

Production of a minimum number of doses to maintain profitability and the increase in post-cervical insemination leads to an increase of the doses produced per boar and, therefore, their share of responsibility in the production process.

The shorter and lower dose regime saves money but there is an increased risk of follicular cyst development, which may occur at doses below 13mg/day.

Introduction of post-cervical insemination has a very significant economic impact on the whole of the pork industry, and is a challenge of parallel magnitude to that raised by the transition from natural service to artificial insemination.

Meeting batch breeding targets requires availability of enough service-ready weaned sows and gilts.

It has not proved possible to actively eliminate App from chronically affected permanently occupied breeder-feeder herds.

This paper describes the acute outbreak of App within a pig population and how control may be achieved.

Gilts are the population most likely to excrete M. hyo during lactation because they will probably have become infected within 200 days prior to their first farrowing.

The method is based on oral fluid collection from the groups of viraemic pigs by means of cotton ropes that will be hung in the incoming gilts pens.

The economic evaluation of each assessment allows the producer to quantify the economic impact of pneumonia.