Carnosine, a molecule made up of two amino acids (β-alanine and L-histidine), is naturally produced in the body. It is mainly concentrated in the skeletal muscles and brain, and is also found in the heart and other tissues.

As important as nutrition may be for sows and piglets, if you don’t get your hog to market and sell it for the maximum profit, nothing else matters. So it should be no surprise that the care and feeding of growing-finishing pigs is a prime concern of producers and, by extension, of researchers.

Researchers understand that a strong beginning is essential to piglet development, and milk plays a huge role in sows starting their litters on the right hoof. No wonder then, that while science targets sow nutrition from a number of angles, maximizing sow milk yield continues to be a major focus of research.

In a business where margins are thin, a few ill pigs can be hazardous to your fiscal health. As a result, research has made this a major focus of their efforts on behalf of industry. In particular, three threats to pigs received special attention in recent studies: Brachyspira, PRRS and PEDv.

That’s especially true in the pork industry, where in spite of pork belly prices
rising over the last few years due to high consumer demand, belly quality is still measured using subjective and time-consuming manual methods. As it turns out, it may be a hard problem with a soft solution.

Feed is by far the greatest cost of pig production, responsible for 65% - 70% of total expenses, and growing-finishing pigs account for about 80% of feed consumed. Whether it’s precision feeding of individual pigs or optimizing feeding strategies for pig herds, feed continues to be a key focus of research projects, as it is in a recent study characterizing the nutritive value of emerging feedstuffs.

As a result of larger and larger litter sizes depressing average birth weight and litter weight consistency, there has been some concern in recent years about the adequacy of pre- and post-natal nutrient transfer from sows to piglets.

Pigs don’t sweat. Their lack of sweat glands can be dangerous or even fatal during transport, and it prompted a study on the impact of ventilation in warm weather for pigs prior to unloading at the plant. Today, the product of that study is earning rave reviews from an industry seeking solutions.

In light of revisions to the Code of Practice for the Care & Handling of Pigs, enrichment as a means of enhancing animal welfare is a higher priority than ever before. That explains the greater emphasis on enrichment in recent research like “Use of accelerometers to automatically assess pig behaviour and welfare.”

For pork researchers, though, the sobering truth is that carcass lesions can speak volumes about when and how the pig was injured. Paying attention to those lesions and the tale they tell could have real benefits for producers, their workers and their animals.