Page 3 of articles about piglet in Swine news

The latest information on piglet exports for Denmark and Holland show an increase of 8,04% in Holland during the first 8 months of the year and 6,09% in Denmark during the first 7 months.

Although the German pig herd has shrunk over the past couple of years, German producers are importing increasing numbers of slaughter hogs and piglets from other countries, in particular Denmark.

When piglets are weaned from milk to solid food, their intestinal flora change, with a steep rise in the numbers of potentially harmful streptococci. This finding has come out of research done by Odette Pérez Gutiérrez, who developed a micro-array called the PIT (pig intestinal tract) chip with which she can quickly scan six hundred different types of bacteria on a glass slide in the lab.

Over the first four months of the year 2,438,000 piglets were exported and it is five percent more that during the same period of last year.

In Denmark, several studies about piglet mortality puts the rate at 24% during the first 4 weeks of life. These results have been deemed “unacceptable” by the Danish Minister of Agriculture, Henrik Hoegh.

Swine stocks were recorded on the reference date of 1 December 2009 and yielded a total figure of 3 137 000 animals. This corresponds to a 0.5% decrease in stocks compared to the date of the last census in June 2009.

A forecast from the Association of Danish Pig Producers shows that in 2015 exports of piglets will be 13.5 m. or as much as 65 % higher than in 2009.

Small farmers of this Cuban eastern province are taking diverse initiatives to carry on the pig farming program severely affected by the rise in the prices of soybeans, corn and other by-products used as animal feeds.

The intra-EU exchanges (Comext) of pigs less than 50 kg amounted to around 200 000 tonnes in 2008. Assuming an average weight of 25 kg, this is equivalent to 8 million young pigs.

The majority of imported pigs in Holland come from Denmark. During 2009, Holland imported three times as many piglets, with imports from Denmark being nearly five times higher than the year before.