The Manager of the Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network blames last fall's flooding in British Columbia for a spike in the number of cases of injury welfare syndrome reported during the fourth quarter of 2021. The Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network has released its Swine Disease Surveillance Report for the Fourth Quarter of 2021.
CWSHIN Manager Dr. Jette Christensen notes partitioners participating in the quarterly conference call reported the effect of last fall's flooding, described as among the top 10 financially devastating climatic events of 2021, on swine farms in British Columbia was much worse than was reported in the news resulting in increased reports of injury and poor animal welfare.
Clip-Dr. Jette Christensen-Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network:
Injury-welfare, that syndrome ranked fifth. It doesn't sound like much but it's usually ranked the eight most frequent so it really jumped up. That was in connection with the comment made in BC that injury welfare has really been a huge problem since the flooding in November.
The situation on the farms were really dire. Animals were standing in water. There were increased lameness’s, there were prolapses, there were back injuries, there were lack of feed for periods, there were excessive feed when they got it, some poor feed quality was an issue and all of these factors in an emergency like the flooding contributed to injuries.
It contributed to poor welfare on those farms so it was really a dire situation for them.
Source : Farmscape