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To accomplish ideal control, vaccination, medication and management changes must be timed to their ideal point in the disease cycle. Effective testing — and a system to turn that data into usable knowledge — is a critical part of that. Tests typically include:

• Observations of clinical signs, walk-throughs and cough indexing.

• Serological profiling. A number of commercial tests can be used, but because Mycoplasma reactivity differs by test, it's important to be consistent, so you get accurate benchmarks. Serology can either be cross-sectional serology, which tests multiple age groups on a given day, or longitudinal, which follows the same animal through the production, testing at regular intervals. They work best when used together.

• Post-mortems and slaughter checks can help isolate what disease agents are interacting to contribute to respiratory disease. They are an important source of critical “realtime” information.

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Yeske P. Experiences with Mycoplasma vaccinations: What to do if vaccination doesn't live up to expectations. Proc Leman Swine Conf 2001:108-110.

Strait E.L.; Erickson B.Z; Thacker E.L. Analysis of Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae field isolates. Proc AASV 2004:95-96.

Economics

Don't waste the investment

A common temptation during tight markets is to shortchange pigs on vaccine dose. Recent research demonstrates that's a money-losing proposition.

Five barns and four barns of commercial pigs were vaccinated at placement with either a full dose or half dose, respectively, of Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica's Enterisol^® Ileitis.

The results showed that three of the four half-dose vaccinated barns broke with ileitis, compared to none of the fully vaccinated ones. Those breaks increased medication costs for treatment, and reduced rate of gain and feed efficiency, increasing feed cost per pound of gain.

All told, the 50-cent “savings” per pig in vaccine cost caused:

• An increase of 57 cents per pig in added treatment costs.
• Another $2.99 lost profit opportunity per pig due to reduced performance.

That $3.56 net benefit per pig by ensuring a full dose, compared to a half-dose, is easily the difference between profit and loss in today's markets, the study authors note.

Walter D.; et. al. Observations of dose dependency with Enterisol Ileitis vaccine. Proc AASV 2004:261-262.