[MUSIC] So now let's shift into thinking about the types of mastitis we might see in swine. And just to give you a reminder, in dairy cows we spent a lot of time kind of breaking this down into environmental versus contagious pathogens. Coliforms being an example here. Staph aureus and strep ag and those kinds of things being an example here of pathogens that might be causing those different kinds of mastitis. Contagious, we talked about in the case of cow, cow to cow. Somehow it has to be transferred from one cow to another. Environmental, those pathogens are in the environment and so the animals are exposed to them fairly often. And so that these things lead back into how do we detect it? How do we treat it? How do we manage the animals? And so, again, in swine quarry, talk about that a little bit. >> So, environmental versus contagious we look at things a little bit differently in terms of swine. Most of it is because when we're looking at a dairy cow, her job is to produce milk, right? Well, the sow, her job is to produce milk, but it's so that she can raise her piglets. So in our larger commercial herds, the sow is probably in a farrowing crate with her piglets so that her piglets are all around her and they can get to her. And this is ideally, a very clean location for her and for her piglets. And so, we don't walk the sow down to the parlor. We don't milk the sow. We make sure, essentially, that the sow is in a nice, comfortable environment for herself and for her piglets. So environmental, we actually sort of talk about them in terms of coliforms. And you may have talked about this before. >> So, we talked about E coli and klebsiella as some example species. >> Yep, and these are the same examples that you're going to find in sows. So, coliform bacteria fall under environmental. They're contaminating the environment, so it's something that classically is found in the gut. And that's why we call them coliforms. So, the sow defecates. The farrowing house becomes contaminated. If she's in there by herself with her piglets for a short amount of time, it's not that big a deal. We're going to try and keep her as clean as possible. But if we continue to put sows into dirty furrowing crates, and we don't get them cleaned up in between, that's when we start to see big outbreaks with coliform mastitis. And coliform mastitis makes a sow very sick. She's going to be systemically ill. She's going to have several teats affected, if not all of her teats are going to be affected. She's going to have an entire litter of hungry and thin and very upset piglets. And they may also be showing signs of scours and they may have diarrhea. >> So in cows, we've talked about peracute mastitis where it goes, essentially, starts in the mammary gland, but then goes systemic. It starts having a systemic effect on the cow, is that- >> Yes. >> So it's, this one you're really almost jumping into that right away. >> Correct. >> Yes. >> Correct, coliform bacterias, when causing mastitis in sows, they're not slow. They're not nice. They're quick, they're fast and she's going to get sick pretty quickly. So we're going to have both sick piglets and sick sows. Our contagious mastitis is you were talking about cow to cow, which makes sense for contagious. >> Right. >> Now we aren't going to probably have two sows interacting with each other or touching each other in a way that they could share bacteria like that. But we still see staph and strep as our most common bacteria. And those are typically introduced either from the skin of the pig or from the mouths of the piglets. >> Okay. >> So when piglets have needle teeth, these are very sharp teeth that grow on either side of the mouth, and they can bite the teats. They can cause problems to the teats. They can cause injuries. And those are great ways for little bits of bacteria to get into the gland. And when those little bits of bacteria get into the gland, we see maybe one or two glands will be affected. And they might be hard, they might not be producing milk. So it might be a little difficult for us, as the veterinarian, to find that because we're going to see a full, swollen gland. The same way the rest of the glands were full and swollen. But we might be finding more piglets that are not full themselves. They don't have full bellies. We may also find, if we watch at nursing time, that she's kicking off some of the piglets. They don't like it when those glands are being manipulated. >> because they're sore and- >> Exactly. >> Hurt, yes. Painful, yep. >> Yep. >> So yeah, so contagious mastitis in the pigs is not so much contagious, but it does tend to cause a much more localized reaction. And the sows really don't get very sick from this. They're still going to be normal. They're going to be eating and drinking appropriately. And most of their litter is going to look pretty fat and sassy. >> Okay, so treatment of these kind of different ways of thinking about how is this happening. As well as what do you do to minimize both of these. >> Right, well, so environmental, we talked about, they're picking it up from dirty farrowing crates typically. And so one of the major things that we do is after any farrowing and after any length of lactation. So the piglets usually stay with mama for about 21 days. When we move them out, we're going to move out the entire room at the same time. And we're going to clean the farrowing crates very well. >> So we don't want any leftover residue from the group before. So that every pig is starting with a fresh and clean environment for them to farrow in. And that helps us a lot with environmental mastitis. If we're seeing more issues with that, we may also clean the sows before they come into the fairing house because they may be dirty from some other location. We can wash the utter in a Betadine type wash or a Novalsan type wash. The same types of teat dips that we would use in dairy cows. That tends to be when we have a bigger problem. Classically you can do- >> So you probably only have to do that once when they come in. >> Correct once when they come into the farrowing house. >> Unlike the cow where your doing it every time you milk. >> Correct, not every time you milk her because the piglets are going to get in there and, honestly, piglets don't really like to drink iodine. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So yes, so we're going to wash them when they come into the farrowing house so that everything is as clean as possible. The contagious mastitis or the staphs and the streps that we see, we don't usually have to clean this out so much because honestly, staph is a normal inhabitant of the skin. So if we clean it off really well, it's going to be back in 20 minutes. So because of that, we don't focus so much on cleaning the pigs. But we do focus on things like trying to match the number teats to the number of piglets that she has so we don't have a lot of fighting. Additionally if we have a major issue with this, we may also decide to clip needle teeth in the piglets so that they don't tear up mom's underline. And so that they don't fight with each other. But to treat these two, however, it's a little bit different. So, in dairy cows you may have talked about intermammary treatment. Where you take an infusion of a drug and you put it into the udder. And you let it sit there so that the drug is there and it's present. We don't have a cistern that we can infuse the drug into. So if we're going to be treating our sows, we're going to treat them systemically. So we have to give them an antibiotic somewhere either orally, or subcu, or intramuscular that's going to disperse throughout the entire sow. And it will make it into the milk which, since we don't sell the milk, we don't worry about a milk withdrawal. >> Right, but there is a withdrawal in terms of the sow, if let's say, at the end of lactation or something, if you were going to cull her or something. >> Absolutely. >> because that way you would have to not cull her right away. >> Correct. >> So some sort of withholding after it, yeah. >> Correct, so when we're treating mastitis, we do want to keep withdrawal times in mind because classically we cull sows at the end of lactation. So her job as a sow is to either be pregnant and grow some piglets inside her, or to be lactating and feed the piglets that are outside of her. If she's doing neither of those, she's not very useful to a producer. So, the easiest time that we might decide that we need to cull her would be at the end of lactation and before she's pregnant with the next group. So if we're going to treat her for mastitis, which if she's got mastitis we're going to treat her for mastitis, we need to make sure that this withdrawal time is not excessively long. So classically, she's going to lactate for approximately 21 days following when she farrows, when she gives birth. And that 21 day time is when she is raising those piglets. At around day 21, those piglets are weaned. And when they're weaned, she's going to go back into heat approximately four to seven days after that. So that's when she'll get bred. She doesn't have to be bred or pregnant while she's lactating. So if she gets mastitis early on in lactation, we've got at least 21 days where we can treat her and make sure that her withdrawal time is appropriately through before we cull her. If it's later on in lactation, if she's a good sow and she's always bred back, likely we're going to treat her and we're going to breed her back. >> Right, so it doesn't matter in terms of the working teats. >> Correct, correct. Additionally, we don't worry so much about the antibiotics going into the piglets that she might be secreting in the milk. Which we expect that she's going to secrete it in the milk because that's where she needs the antibiotic help, because those piglets are never going to get marketed as young piglets. They go to slaughter at approximately, five months, five to six months. [MUSIC]
