Feedstuffs in Focus

Strategies for managing PRRS in modern swine operations

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PRRS (Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome) stands as the most economically devastating disease in US swine production since the eradication of classic swine fever. What makes this viral pathogen so destructive? Dr. Nic Lauterbach, Technical Services Veterinarian with Pharmgate Animal Health, brings seven years of front-line experience battling PRRS to this essential conversation.

The days of PRRS being merely a seasonal concern have vanished. Modern producers now face this challenge year-round across operations of all sizes and geographic locations. Dr. Lauterbach explains how PRRS manifests through its namesake symptoms – reproductive failures (including abortions and stillbirths) and respiratory distress that weakens immune defenses. This immunosuppression creates the perfect storm for secondary bacterial infections that would otherwise pose little threat to healthy pigs.

Prevention through rigorous biosecurity remains the gold standard approach, but when PRRS threatens, a comprehensive strategy becomes essential. Dr. Lauterbach details Pharmgate's multi-faceted approach, highlighting their PRRSGard vaccine, which has demonstrated efficacy against relevant wild-type strains. For herds experiencing active infection, managing secondary bacterial complications becomes crucial – another area where Pharmgate offers proven solutions.

Ready to strengthen your PRRS defense strategy? Visit Pharmgate.com/usa or connect with the Pharmgate team at the upcoming World Pork Expo to learn how their experience and solutions can work for your operation.

Sarah Muirhead:

Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) is the most economically significant disease to affect US swine production since the eradication of classic swine fever. As indicated by its name, PRRS leads to reproductive failure, including abortions and stillbirths In young pigs. It can cause respiratory issues like pneumonia and can increase susceptibility to secondary bacterial infections. Welcome to Feedstuffs In Focus, our podcast taking a look at the big issues affecting the livestock, poultry, grain and animal feed industries. I'm your host, sarah Muirhead. This episode is brought to you by Pharmgate Animal Health, a growing business that puts livestock first. Pharmgate provides a proven portfolio of technically supported, high-quality products that are the foundation of custom herd health protocols. By offering multiple options for active ingredients, concentrations and administration routes, Pharmgate provides you with choices to fit your needs and gets you the results you want. Joining us today to talk about PRRS and options for protecting your herd is Dr Nic Lauterbach, Technical Services Veterinarian with Pharmgate Animal Health. So, Nic, tell us about your role at Pharmgate and your experience in battling PRRS.

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

Yeah hi thanks for having me. I'm Dr Nic Lauterbaum, a technical service veterinarian with Pharmgate Animal Health. I've been with the company about two and a half years. Prior to that, I was a veterinarian within a production company in the Midwest for four and a half years, and so I've been in the swine industry for seven years just about seven years and so with that obviously comes a lot of experience battling purrs, especially raising pigs in the Midwest, so had a lot of experience on both the sow side as well as the finishing pig side, and I think that that can be said about a lot of other folks on our team within Pharmgate as well. I think that's one thing that really sets our group apart is when you're talking about these prevalent pathogens, specifically with PRRS, right, we have a lot of in-barn real-world experiences. That, I think, positions us uniquely to really bring these science-based solutions and talk about some of the ways to manage this really impactful disease that we're going to talk about today.

Sarah Muirhead:

So what have you been hearing out there from customers about PRRS challenges and prevalence?

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

I would say, interestingly, the one thing that I would say we hear a lot that has probably changed, even in my fairly brief career is that we talk about PRRS year round. Now it really does not seem that there is an off season for PRRS. People are focused on keeping PRRS out, managing PRRS, working through PRRS breaks pretty much from. You know it used to be. We dealt with it a lot in the winter times as the weather got cold and as the season shifted. It just seems like anymore it's a 12 month a year. Conversation that we're having is around PRRS and how do I manage this better?

Sarah Muirhead:

And it's all sizes of operations right.

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

Yeah, it's all sizes of operations, right? Yeah, it's all sizes of operations, and really it's in every state that we raise pigs. I think there's very few states anymore that are untouched by the PRRS virus, and especially with I'm located in central Iowa. A big portion of our team is from South Dakota to Iowa to Oklahoma, so we spend a lot of time talking about PRRS.

Sarah Muirhead:

So what kind of clinical signs should producers be looking for as they monitor for PRRS in their herd? How best to have that diagnosed?

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

Yep.

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

So PRRS stands for porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus, and so that in the name kind of tells you what disease processes we need to look out for.

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

So when I think about the south side of things is really where you can see both, both of those diseases or both of the uh pieces of the name kind of manifests itself where you have the reproductive disease, which reduced conception rate, loss of litters and just overall a reduction in the number of pigs weaned from the sow farm.

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

But also you can see the respiratory side of things where it tends to be really hard on sows and weaned pigs alike, where you'll typically see lethargic, off-feed sows. You could see an increase in piglet mortality in the farrowing house and just really a really significant impact on the number of pigs that were weaning from the sow farm. When you get out into the finishing side of things, obviously you're going to see more on the on the respiratory side, where you'll see a really reduced activity, lethargic pigs, reduction in water intake, reduction in feed intake and in the worst cases has the potential to see some really significant mortality. That is associated with the PRRS but then is also partially associated with some of these secondary bacterial infections that comes with this virus's ability to really hamper the immune system of this pig to respond to bacterial pathogens that it otherwise would have no problems fighting off.

Sarah Muirhead:

Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit, those secondary infections. What's the overall risk from those?

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

Yeah, the risk is huge and really that's the piece when we talk about an active PRRS infection. That's the piece we feel like we can manage the best, or try to attempt to manage the best Right we have. That's where our antibiotic treatment regimens would come in, come into play when you have these secondary bacterial infections that, like I said, the pig would routinely come into contact with. But when you add a PRRS co-infection on top of this, that immune system is just not functioning to the highest level and that's when those bacterial, that bacterial pressure can then really pose an issue to these pigs.

Sarah Muirhead:

How important is PRRS prevention versus treatment, and is it possible to fully eliminate PRRS from a system when you have it there?

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

Yeah, I would say PRRS prevention is the number one thought that almost. We talk to a lot of people across the country and I don't know of anybody that's not actively working to keep PRRS out, whether they've had PRRS before or they haven't had PRRS in the history of the farm. Everybody has some plan in place or some steps in place to keep PRRS out of their farm because prevention is the best way to manage this right. If you keep PRRS out, you don't have to worry about managing it. You don't have to worry about eliminating it. With that said, I do think that from an industry standpoint, we all recognize and realize the value that being PRRS negative has, and I do think that we are working towards being PRRS negative. There's just a lot of different factors that go into that right.

Sarah Muirhead:

What are some of the strategies that you recommend when it comes to the control of PRRS?

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

Yeah.

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

So probably steps one, two, three, however many they are is biosecurity Keeping this disease we mentioned it prevention If I can keep this disease out of my farm and I remain PRRS negative, I don't have to worry about eliminating it, I don't have to worry about managing it.

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

So trying to put as many layers between the pig and potential PRRS introduction is critical. So having those biosecurity plans that are evaluated routinely, making sure we don't have any gaps and making sure that our risks to our system haven't changed, is really critical. The second piece of that would be a vaccination strategy, and this would be widely used by the industry as well, where you know, if we know, we're going to do everything we can to keep PRRS out of our system. But based off your geography, your pig density, where your farms are at, you will likely have some inherent risk of PRRS being introduced into your farm, and so I think what ends, what a lot of people then move towards on the management side, is PRRS vaccination, trying to make sure that if those pigs come in contact with a wild type PRRS, we have set them up for as much success as we can possibly have.

Sarah Muirhead:

So what kind of strategies, then, or what kind of solutions, does Pharmgate offer to protect herds against PRRS?

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

So, in terms of the, I think that's the one exciting thing that I really enjoy about working for Pharmgate Animal Health is when it comes to managing PRRS, managing through PRRS breaks. We do have a extensive portfolio that can be beneficial in a lot of scenarios. And so we have antibiotics like we talked about, the secondary bacterial bacterial infections and the roles that those play in making this disease and these co-infections worse, and so we have, you know, water soluble antibiotics like Penn, chlor 64 and Avosyn that are labeled for a broad range of those bacterial pathogens. But then we also do on the vaccination side. We are excited about having PRRS Guard, which is our modified live PRRS vaccine available to the industry. And, yeah, that we have been able to show is efficacious in the face of a lot of these relevant wild type PRRS strains that we're seeing out in the industry today.

Sarah Muirhead:

How exactly does PRRS Guard work?

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

So PRRS Guard is a lineage one, chimeric modified live PRRS vaccine, and so the goal with it, along with a range of our other commercial vaccines in the swine industry, is just to allow that pig to build an immune response before it comes into contact with a wild. That PRRS Guard has the ability to cross protect against some of these significant wild type PRRS strains, such as a 174 PRRS, and most recently we conducted completed a research study that shows efficacy in the face of a 144 L1C PRRS strain.

Sarah Muirhead:

So what about product safety performance effectiveness? Talk to us more about that study product safety, performance, effectiveness.

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

Talk to us more about that study. Yeah, sure so. Pharmgate Animal Health takes a lot of pride in the safety and the efficacy of our vaccines that we bring to market. We have a really robust protocol that we follow to make sure that the vaccines that we are bringing out are safe and that they work well in the situations that we need them to work well for the industry.

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

Right, we want to be seen as being a resource and being a value-added partner to producers and veterinarians alike, and so that's where the trial I just referenced is some of the most recent work we've done with Purr's Guard, where we challenge pigs with a relevant purr strain Guard, where we challenged pigs with a relevant PRRS strain 144 lineage 1C that we see a lot of in the Midwest, and we showed success with PRRS Guard vaccinated pigs in reducing the impact that that PRRS has against not only the non-vaccinated PRRS control pigs but also had six. We were. We were as efficacious as another relevant commercial PRRS modified live that's on the market, and so we're really excited about that because I think ultimately, we want to be seen as a an option for people that are looking for hey, you know how do I. How do I maximize the tools that are available to us and the tools that are in my toolbox?

Sarah Muirhead:

Very good. Anything else you'd like to add and leave our listeners with here today.

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

Yeah, I would just leave everybody that if you ever have any questions about who we are as a company or our experiences, you know Pharmgate, Pharmgate Animal Health.

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

I think we are uniquely positioned that not only me and my experiences, but really our entire team.

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

We have a lot of in barn experience as it relates to the swine industry, so our whole team has been around the, has been around agriculture for most of our careers and a majority of us have spent our careers specifically in the swine industry at all different levels, at all different, you know, at all different phases of production.

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

So we feel that we can be a real resource and a value added to add value to producers and veterinarians alike. We have a robust portfolio and, specifically when it comes to managing and getting through these PRRS breaks, I think that's where partnering with somebody like us, where we have the PRRS vaccine on the front side and then if things were to happen and we need to react and we need to try to limit these impacts, we have antibiotics that could also be implemented to try to reduce that impact. So if you have any more questions or if you would like to just learn more about how Pharmgate can be a resource for you. You can look us up on our website, Pharmgate. That's Pharmgate with a PH. Or come find us at World Pork. We're just a couple of weeks from that and we'll be at World Pork at a booth inside the Varied Industries building.

Sarah Muirhead:

Very good, We'll see you at world pork and thank you so much for sharing your your time and your insight with us here today, Nic.

Dr. Nic Lauterbach:

Thank you, I appreciate it.

Sarah Muirhead:

I'm Sarah Muirhead and you've been listening to feedstuffs in focus. If you would like to hear more conversations about some of the big issues affecting the livestock, poultry, grain and animal feed industries, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast channel. Until next time, have a great day and thank you for listening.