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- Hi this is Sarah Mikesell
with thepigsite.com
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and today we're here with Nate Jackman.
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He is a livestock specialist
with MWI Veterinarian Supply.
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Thanks for being with us today, Nate.
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- Thank you.
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- So you're out with farmers, producers,
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on a daily basis with your position.
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Tell us a little bit about
what trends you're seeing.
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What industry trends
are going on out there.
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- Well currently, one thing I've been
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talking a lot about with
veterinarians and producers
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is iron deficiency in baby pigs.
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Something we've been
doing is we've been going
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into some producers, into some sal units
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and we've been doing hemoglobin tests
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on these baby pigs and
what we've been finding
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is that these pigs are
anemic and deficient in iron
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and that we're trying to
get the word out there
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that the weening weight of
a baby pig is a lot greater
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than it was 30, 40 years ago.
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But our protocol, there's a
lot of protocols out there
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still recommending the same amount of iron
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that we gave them 30-40 years ago.
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So what we're doing is we're testing pigs,
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baby pigs, healthy, big, baby pigs
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and we're finding that
those pigs are anemic
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and they need another dose of iron
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so what we're recommending
to veterinarians
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and producers is that we
give a 200 milligram dose
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at day one and we give
another 200 milligram dose
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at day 14 and give that pig enough iron
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before we ween that pig and
send it off to the nursery.
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So that's one thing that
I've been talking a lot about
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and fortunately I work
with a lot of producers
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that are open to that,
open to the fact that,
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hey show me something that's not working
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that we're doing and let's try to fix it
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and we've been doing pin side tests,
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in these sal units, and
testing them with a HemoCue,
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a hemoglobin test unit.
- Yep.
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- A two or three minute
test, and we find out
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if that pig is deficient
or not and we kind of
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pick pigs at random and
then we show the data
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to them afterwards and show them, that yes
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these pigs are anemic.
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So that's one of the
trends going on right now.
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I don't think that out
of a half a dozen farms
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that we've been on that
we really been surprised
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but we have surprised our producers
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and I think we've changed a lot of minds
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and a lot of protocols.
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- It sounds like diagnostics is playing
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a bigger role in what
you're doing these days.
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- Yes ma'am, that diagnostics is big,
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because it's not so much the sales rep
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coming in here saying,
hey you gotta do this,
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you gotta do this, and they think okay,
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the sales rep just
trying to sell products.
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What we're trying to do is
let the science prove itself.
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Here's the data and these
are your pigs we're testing
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so we're just letting the
science speak for itself.
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- Very good, excellent, well thank you
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so much for your time today Nate.
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- Thank you.
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- Very good, this is Sarah
Mikesell, with thepigsite.com.