Living with PRRS: What Full Vs. Half Dose PRRS Vaccination Teaches Us

This week, Dr. Tyler Bauman, director of health at the Maschhoffs, takes us behind the scenes of a real finishing‑barn problem and the data‑driven discovery it sparked. Through field comparisons of half‑ vs. full‑dose PRRS vaccinations, the team uncovered a meaningful impact: a 3.5% drop in mortality with the full dose. 

He and host Kasey Brown discuss these key takeaways: 

• The Power of Data in Tackling PRRS: [00:02:10]
  Dr. Bauman describes how collecting, analyzing and acting on field data allowed his team to justify changes and demonstrate real ROI to their operational leaders.
• Full Dose vs. Half Dose: What the Numbers Say: [00:10:01]
  Through extensive comparisons, the team found a game-changer for barn health.
• Adapting Vaccine Timing and Protocols: [00:10:12]
  The investigation grew beyond mere dosing amounts, with experiments around timing to optimize protocols for different barn scenarios.
• Real-Time Testing and Surveillance: [00:08:48]
  Aggressive, routine testing enabled faster detection and response to PRRS breaks, leading to better overall outcomes and earlier interventions.
• Collaboration, Communication, and Continuous Improvement: [00:23:57]
  Success hinged on buy-in at every level. He emphasized transparent data sharing and proactive communication, which led to broader adoption and improved barn performance.
• Managing Expectations & Setting Goals: [00:26:45]
  Managing PRRS isn’t about eliminating all risk — it's about setting realistic goals, managing expectations, and consistently refining your strategy and response plan.

Get Involved
Interested in data analytics for your own operation? Reach out to Dr. Bauman (tyler.bauman@pigsrus.net) directly or connect with the Iowa State EPI team for guidance. Learn more about the Iowa State EPI team here. Check out the POMP program here. 

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Transcript

Welcome back to an episode of the Swine Health Hotline. Today, I've got Dr. Tyler Bauman, who's the director of health with the Maschoffs. Thank you for joining me today, Dr. Tyler.

Tyler Bauman (00:35.909)

Yeah, it's good to be here. Appreciate the opportunity to talk.

Kasey Brown (00:38.926)

Well, before we get started, tell me a little bit about your background and how you got started with the Maschhoffs.

Tyler Bauman (00:46.119)

Yep, so I'm a 2016 grad from Iowa State University. Started with the Maschhoffs right out of school and stayed with them ever since. Have background, retired military during that time, retired in 21 and started as a herd vet with the Maschhoffs and have been moved up into the director of health role here recently.

Kasey Brown (01:08.494)

That's cool. What branch of the military?

Tyler Bauman (01:11.047)

I ended up in the veterinary corps is where I finished. I started out as a truck driver back in 2001 and had a lot of exciting adventures in that experience.

Kasey Brown (01:22.026)

Sure, we could have a whole podcast on that, we're gonna talk about living with PRRS today. But awesome, so tell me a little bit what sparked your interest in this topic.

Tyler Bauman (01:24.619)

yeah.

Tyler Bauman (01:33.489)

So this one started out with frustrations on the finishing side with differences in performance between a half dose and full dose per vaccine. And we were struggling primarily with one flow of pigs and had made the decision to let's try full dosing as our protocol at that time was a half dose and saw immediate improvements on the consistency of the response and the resolution of.

Clinical signs, how long those pigs were clinical. From that point, as part of just a process of ROI, justification to our production teams to expand our dosing strategy, we started collecting data on lots that broke with lateral PRRS that we detected and categorizing where they half dose, full dose, the product type. And then we just started adding in more information as we went along as

What was the timing of the break, what was including a lot of the closeout information, which we have to rely on the analytics of the ISU EPI team to really help us grab all this data, put it into a format that we can readily look at and then draw conclusions from. And so it's been a great partnership between the Maschhoffs and the Iowa State EPI team in growing this partnership.

Kasey Brown (02:56.491)

So before we get, before we dive deeper, can you walk me through the rationale between giving a half dose versus a full dose?

Tyler Bauman (03:08.369)

So when we're talking modified live vaccines, there is a certain degree that these vaccines will replicate once they're administered. So with that, you have some kind of confidence that over a period of time, if you stay negative, your pig's immune system will replicate that vaccine enough that it will then become adequate immunity should they be faced with a lateral PRRS challenge.

And so it made sense from a cost that, if we do half dose, keep them clean until they broke, then, you know, there's, it's advantageous. And so we just found that our purse breaks, whether it was, they were getting sooner or they're more severe. And we started this in 21, 2021, when like the one four fours were really starting to edge in. And so they just were more virulent, more widespread. And so the timing of that with the, with our vaccine strategy just kind of lined up really well in that regard. So, we definitely saw differences, which I'm sure we'll get into, and it's driven this program that we're doing to where it is today.

Kasey Brown (04:21.073)

Well, thank you for that background. So you recently presented some really cool data about living with PRRS at the Pig Livability Conference. So you kind of mentioned it, but what sparked all of that data collection? I'm sure it wasn't something of, we've got too much time on our hands.

Tyler Bauman (04:40.807)

No, I think there's so much data out there that it's hard to get your head wrapped around it. And we started off really small with the data. It was literally just trying to showcase to our production teams, our operation teams that, the money spent on the extra half dose of vaccine had a really good ROI. And so we started on that path. We were able to showcase there was a great return on that.

And as I mentioned, we started collecting more information along the way, the type of strains and the timing of those breaks and various factors in this. What other areas can we look at and impact positively through this data collection? And so, as I mentioned, the partnership with ISU EPI team was that piece that we needed. We needed the data analytics team to help support that. The challenge that we have with this, the data is not controlled data.

So it's really hard to make decisions on that kind of data when it's just field data, what we call dirty data commonly. And so they have modeling that can help control a lot of different variables and isolate down to one variable that you can then make some decisions on or get a result on. 

So through them and their data analytics, we've been able to narrow it down for a number of different things. So we started with half dose versus full dose. We're looking at now timing of vaccine administration, split dosing versus full dosing or single dosing, which we're in the process of doing that right now. And we moved also into the breed-to-wean side. So the POMP program, which is PRRS Outbreak Management Program, also through the ISU EPI team for the South Farm. 

Again, looking at just tons of data out there, how can you compartmentalize this and then benchmark, compare against not just protocols that you have, but protocols that are in the industry, the strains that are in the industry, and try to continue to improve our process on getting back to stability or reducing the losses or whatever the goal is that you have. You can have some better data to make that decision making.

Kasey Brown (07:04.206)

Awesome. So you mentioned before we hit record that you really specialize on the wean-to-market side, right?

Tyler Bauman (07:10.919)

Yeah, so my background really has been finishing in Iowa. I certainly have had a South farm experience, but where I got really excited and really in the details on is that we need a market side.

Kasey Brown (07:23.886)

Awesome, so let's dive into that. Tell me about your data collection protocols and then let's dive in a little bit on what patterns and what kind of insights were you starting to see after this data started getting analyzed.

Tyler Bauman (07:38.767)

So we started with just detecting, you know, when you had what appeared to be clinical signs, PRRS clinical signs, actually, as opposed to just saying, it's PRRS and driving on and you you run, you know, medication or whatever your response plan was. We worked with the teams to say, no, get the actual test in because that allowed us to store that information. We could sequence, get the strain information. And so it's still, the core of it is based on

lateral detection of sites with clinical science. We do have some active surveillance that we've picked up some wild type strains that, you know, maybe they weren't terribly clinical, which tells me we're missing, we're still missing a bunch. But we are testing a lot today. From that we do Or5 sequencing. We haven't really moved it into next gen sequencing. But as that technology continues to improve, my guess is that we'll continue to lean towards that way. 

But for OR5 sequencing, it works good for what we're doing today. And so the one thing, as I mentioned, as we got the teams more committed or more in that routine of testing on those clinical science and being more aggressive with that, obviously our numbers have improved, but we're finding we're detecting a lot sooner in implementing strategies in a lot sooner. Whatever the action item is for when a break hits, you know, we're getting there a lot quicker and getting a better response.

Kasey Brown (09:17.646)

Forgive my ignorance on this one, but when you're saying testing is this a fluid collection, this is the blood collection, is it tissue? Tell me a little bit more about that.

Tyler Bauman (09:26.223)

Yeah, I should have clarified. It's almost exclusively oral fluids today. Again, know, one vet for, you know, 200 plus sites, whatever the case may be, it can't get there everywhere. And so what is the easiest sample to collect? The team is certainly capable to get serum and tissue. We do tissues somewhat frequently, but really focus on the oral fluids just for ease of use. again, the data that we're trying to utilize and or capture and then make decision on really the oral fluid testing is optimal for that.

Kasey Brown (10:03.182)

So you mentioned you were collecting quite a bit of data. So tell me a little bit more of what you learned from all of this.

Tyler Bauman (10:11.335)

Yeah, so I think, as I said, we started in 2021 and each year we have just continued to expand. We've started in one region within the mashups. We've expanded it into all regions. The regions that I will obviously are over representative with the number of lateral break detections. From that, know, we've had those results and are starting to roll into we identified that the full dose strategy, full dose per vaccine about, it was like a three and a half, 3.6 % mortality improvement over the half dose. And so we've essentially expanded that across our site in Iowa that if not year round in part, there'll be seasonally full dose to continue to try to capture that improvement. As I mentioned, we've adjusted our vaccine timing. 

So we used to do, where we first vaccinated at placement or three weeks post-wean would be common. We were looking at other factors, having harder startups with pigs, getting them on feed. And so we moved vaccine back into the cell farm. And one option was, you do a single dose at weaning versus a half dose at processing, half dose at weaning. Again, trying to get to that full dose. And so we are actively compiling that data right now to see, is there a difference in a mortality, essentially a grade eight, performance metric by doing one of those strategies over the other.

Kasey Brown (11:46.223)

Cool. Because of the quick life cycle of pigs, how fast can you start implementing some of these things that you're learning from this research?

Tyler Bauman (12:06.939)

Yeah, there's certainly opportunity for us to circle the wagons a little bit closer. And so we're probably on a, we're on probably more like an annual basis. It's just kind of the routine, but there's numerous examples where we're looking at specific things more frequently, maybe just beyond the lateral wean-to-market stuff, but you know, on the pump stuff with that PRRS outbreak management, like every PRRS break that you have on these sow farms is like, hey, what did we do last time? 

What have we seen done with this strain before? Maybe the industry, and we're working on one right now with those questions being asked is we have a goal that we want specific, whether that's to get negative as quick as possible, or we want baseline production. We want to get pig production back to what it was prior to the break. If you can identify what your goal is up front, then you change your strategy on how you get there because one's going to be certain strategies will impact one greater than the other. so that's probably going to be more routine. 

But the the weaned to market stuff, it's probably more in a year. And it's really the piece on that is just you don't have enough replicates really to to swing that data the way it needs to or have comfort that it's or confidence in the data without the numbers. So you need the numbers with it.

Kasey Brown (13:34.766)

So when you presented this at the Pig Livability Conference, you mentioned that you were trying to answer quite a lot of questions. You mentioned a little bit of this, but it looks like you were trying to answer quite a bit. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Tyler Bauman (13:48.999)

Yeah, so like I said, the first thing was half dose versus full dose. But as we got into it, it was just categorizing the breaks. And so was the timing of those breaks. then how did pigs respond to different medication strategies? And so we looked at whole herd vaccine or antibiotics, water meds. Do you look at running products that are like anti-inflammatories and trying to reduce the

the fever component of that and then antibiotics. And so they're really hard to do because you're not, again, it's gonna come back to numbers, but as we get year over year and we track that data and we have confidence in what we track, you can start making those connections and improve your processes. The other big one is these lineages that the severity, we certainly see the lineage of the L1C.5s continue to be the primary strains that we're dealing with, but the Lineage 1C.2s, if I recall, were much more severe, at least this last year. So we'll continue to track those and then it just helps guide the discussions with our partners and our production team on, here's some expectations, here's some ways to get ahead of it, and that hopefully at the end of it, we save more pigs.

That would be our end goal for sure.

Kasey Brown (15:20.225)

Absolutely. Tell me about what kind of response did you get from this at the conference? Did you get specific questions along some lines or tell me how, I mean, you're talking to other vets at that point and other operators. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Tyler Bauman (15:37.263)

Yeah, I think the frequent questions that we get, we've presented this information or similar information, you know, the initial stuff and as we continue to grow it, there's continue to be growing interest. First one is, you know, what did you see with the half dose versus full dose? And as I mentioned, we did see that improvement. The initial assessment we did was about a 3.5% mortality improvement. The challenge with our data now, and I've been very open about this, is that our ability to do half dose versus full dose evaluation is a lot tougher because we have moved essentially all of our stuff to full dose and it's really bottled neck. Like I don't have much for half dose comparison on year over year. 

But I have difference in timing, know, we whether it's the split dose or the single dose, know. So we have that information that's coming available. So those are pretty common questions that we get how can I get involved? What are we doing on the south arm things with the pump?

You know, again, what strategies are being put in place that we could implement in our system to, again, improve the situation. And the one thing that on the mash-up front, the way we view it is we've been very open and transparent because, you know, if other companies or other integrators, growers are able to reduce their disease prevalence or impact, that benefits everyone. And so we've had really good discussions with sharing of those kind of strategies that have been beneficial for multiple different growers and integrators.

Kasey Brown (17:08.783)

Let's dive a little bit more on the the breed to wean side. Tell me a little bit more about POMP and we'll dive in from there.

Tyler Bauman (17:17.959)

Yep, so POMP stands for PRRS Outbreak Management Program, specifically today looking at sow farms undergoing a PRRS break. Again, it's another data analytic program ran by Iowa State EPIC team. Again, it helps. It's really an all encompassing database and data analytics looking at the dendograms of the PRRS strain you have compared to others, others that you've had in the system.

It can break down by sow farm on its break rate, duration of closures. We will specifically, the way Maschoffs operates is we get paid by selling grade A pigs to the packers. We're not a vertically integrated company. And so we, throughput, we want grade A throughput. And so for us in most cases, it's gonna be how quickly can we get baseline production back versus we need to sell a PRRS-negative wean pig. So you're looking for a stability. So that'd be kind of like the big differences. 

So we wanna reduce total losses and get back baseline production as quick as possible. In most of the cases, that's gonna be our goal. So one thing that POMP can do is to help us look at year over year, break after break and give us the kind of the tools, the analytic tools like, hey, this worked here. Here's what we saw when you did MLV first or LBI first, know, did something second, that timing. So it helps us track all those changes we did to then apply to the next PRRS break.

Kasey Brown (18:59.353)

That's cool, I love that. So again, I'm assuming testing is still probably the same along with your sows versus your wean-to-market.

Tyler Bauman (19:10.565)

Yeah, and it's I mean the testing that's going to be done in breeding is obviously going to be much more structured, much more. You know, the impact so much greater and so the there's going to be a more routine testing and probably quicker like you're going to test just about any if you the pig sneezes wrong, you know, we're like, we better better just double check, you know, just because the impact so great. And there's more eyes on it, whereas in wean-to-market, you know, it's typically you got one field manager and they get there once a week and you know, so your timing may be a little off on when they're actually went clinical versus South Farm. 

They're gonna follow abort, they're off feeds, you know, that may be the clinical signs. Maybe it's additional coughing in the farrowing rooms. You're gonna start testing pretty quickly on that.

Kasey Brown (20:00.367)

Cool, and tell me a little bit, so what did you find from this side of your data collection?

Tyler Bauman (20:07.417)

Ongoing. You know, the one thing is that it's, you know, we went back when we started working with POMP is to try to get as much information we could from our past breaks. the it's what's challenging is like, for example, if you have if you LVI farms, the challenge is that we didn't really have that. Like how how how big of a dose of virus did we give?

So LVI isn't always LVI. Sometimes it just means you ran positive animals in front of other animals to try to get that exposure. And so those are challenges on like, is it LVI equal to LVI? And so we've been making strides to standardize that a little more within our system so that we can have some consistency and understanding what those results are. Really what we've been looking at.

initially here is what is the sequence of exposure in a PRRS break to either impact stability, total losses or baseline production. And so, you know, the initial one is like, if you do three MLVs, say you do MLV at break, 30 days later, nine days after that, or do you MLV, LVI, MLV, MLV, LVI, LVI, whatever those programs are like.

Those would be things that we look at today. But again, as we get more participants enrolled in POMP and get that their information enrolled, it's been really good for sharing and evaluating, you know, what, where are we having successes on kind of the key, key indicators or the key goals.

Kasey Brown (21:54.041)

How can you get involved with POMP?

Tyler Bauman (21:58.481)

So first, easy to say, you just reach out to the ISU EPI team with Daniel Lanieres, and most people know the team there. meet with them and they can explain the processes, everything that goes in and the data collection and what they can do. But it's really just reaching out to the Iowa State team.

Kasey Brown (22:18.928)

What excites you the most about this kind of study, about what you're learning about it? Yeah, what gets you excited about this?

Tyler Bauman (22:27.321)

Yeah, so I mean really back to the wean-to-market side. What I was really excited about was that we had an impact at a time when you know you were just kind of throwing darts and maybe maybe you had some wins. Maybe you didn't. It was hard to to see how if it was consistent or not. And so that that was an immediate like win and we can we can start driving some change and actually feel you can have an impact because when you have in these PRRS breaks, it's hard to feel the magnitude of the impact at the time. 

And so this helps us kind of do a retrospective, like, wow, you you save, you know, three and a half percent mortality by that decision. And so now that's where we are. We continue to make changes in what we saw this last year. We saw more PRRS breaks. was almost double the PRRS breaks this last year. 

Actually, the last two years have been double than what we saw three years ago. And this last year we had 4 % better grade A on PRRS breaks than the PRRS breaks the years previous. So we have made a substantial improvement in our processes and our response and how we, the result of those lateral PRRS breaks. And so we're feeling that momentum and now we're getting frustrated with, well, you know, I got hit hard on this week and it's hard to see the big picture, but you know, it's like, it's still way better than it was the year before and definitely the year before that. 

And so it's great that the team is continuing to challenge themselves to get better. They're not just content, right? They want to continue to drive that improvement. So that's how we get the buy in, continue to move this program forward.

Kasey Brown (24:20.398)

That's awesome. love that. Tell me a little bit more of how you do get this implemented throughout multiple people, multiple segments. Tell me a little bit more about getting all of that buy-in.

Tyler Bauman (24:34.503)

It wasn't upfront, it was a little more challenging. Again, I'm fortunate that my production team is very penured, very veteran. And I mean, they were right most of the time that, I just got PRRS and we're gonna do this. And so there wasn't the need to test and go get the sample and get it shipped. it was initially kind of hard to get that buy-in.

But as we just continue to present the data to them, like, hey, here's what we're seeing, here's the timing, here's some anticipations, here's how we're utilizing the information. Once we could showcase that, especially the timing. So, you we found that most of the PRRS breaks continue to be late nursery for us. Almost, it was like 90 % of them were late nursery or either early feeder pig and it allowed them to have discussions with their partners on like, hey, this is when we're seeing the purrs, either one be really aware. 

So like, let me know, here's rope kits that we're ready to go. Let's just hang ropes, get proactive about it. Or let's ramp up practices. Let's get really mindset focused on biosecurity during these key pieces. See if we can keep it out. That'd be a fun change. But the most part was like just having the right mindset. The communication really helped the relationships, really set those expectations. 

And so now that the team has been really good about their buy-in on that. From there, once we had that, our leaders and different R &D personnel within our company, again, they had the buy-in that they could see the data, felt like we could make some decisions based off that for the better. And as I go back to this last year, we made a lot of changes, a lot of big decisions and ended up gaining 4 % improvement on those burst breaks. And so that's like for us, I mean, that's real, that's real action. That's real results that continues to be, you know, the driving force behind the program.

Kasey Brown (26:38.0)

Yeah, 4 % improvement is massive. That's amazing. One thing you mentioned that PRRS outbreaks were worse within the last couple years. Why do you think that was different that year? Was it a different strain? Tell me more about that.

Tyler Bauman (26:41.009)

Yeah.

Tyler Bauman (26:52.803)

Yeah, we'll probably have to lean on maybe some more of the EPI experts within the industry on this one. But the information that you know, I've heard is, you know, we start talking the it was the reclassification. So the lineage one sees, but, you know, it started out with the 144 epidemic. It was a very conserved strain for the first couple of years. But to my understanding, it just it was more virally. It took fewer viral particles to, you know, blow up a farm. And that severity was was following.

So there's probably something to that on the makeup of those purse strains. you know, as we kind of got the weak ones out, we got those pretty handled pretty well. And so the strongest is going to survive, it's going to adapt. And that's just kind of the showcase where the place we're in today is, you know, the survival of the fittest on these strains. So some of them are just they're pretty tough, but we're you know, we're testing more. maybe that's part of the reason we're detecting more. But there's certain there is there is a level of there's just more outbreaks happening today.

Kasey Brown (27:58.161)

But with more information you can make those better decisions moving forward and obviously you're seeing success with that which is amazing.

Tyler Bauman (28:06.875)

Yep.

Kasey Brown (28:08.378)

That is so cool. So we are closing in around our time. So I wanted to circle the wagons a little bit. one thing about living with PRRS that you'd like listeners to really take away from with our discussion.

Tyler Bauman (28:21.767)

Well, I think that's really the take home is, you know, you have to make decisions that there's a lot of really good reasons to continue to grow pigs in, you know, pig dense areas, disease dense areas, you know, whether that's distance to packer, distance to females, right? So there's a lot of cost advantages. And so it is going to get challenging to try to keep, stay negative or naive in certain parts of the country. So if you have the mindset of, it's gonna happen, there's high probability it's gonna happen, is have the mindset, how do I live with it? 

How do I continue to get the best performance? What actions or what different management protocols can I put in place to reduce that impact, the negative impact of those breaks? And I think having that mindset, it bodes well better with our growers.

You know, it's probably gonna happen, but here's everything we're doing and here's how we're respond It just kind of sets those expectations. You just see you get better buy-in and better results at the end of the day with it

Kasey Brown (29:27.056)

That's a perfect practical takeaway to move forward with. So if people have questions about this or about your data, how can they contact you?

Tyler Bauman (29:37.095)

They can contact me directly at tyler.bauman@pigsrs.net. Certainly I'm on the AASV directory, but otherwise the Iowa State EPI team, as I mentioned, Daniel Lanera's team, just a phenomenal team to work with and partner with, can really be great resources for some of that data analytics components if that's something that individual's looking for.

Kasey Brown (30:04.196)

Thank you so much for sharing this fascinating study and process that you've gone through. I really appreciate your time and we'll get all of your contact information in the show notes, but I really appreciate it. I know our listeners will take away really great things from this episode. So thanks for joining us today.

Tyler Bauman (30:25.243)

Yep, thanks for the opportunity. Thank you.