What are the symptoms of African swine fever in sows?

The initial signs of African swine fever in sows are: drop in body temperature, loss of appetite, extreme weakness, fatigue and weakness, rapid pulse, coughing, accelerated breathing, etc. In the later stage, they show difficulty breathing, serous or mucopurulent conjunctivitis, bloody diarrhea, vomiting, and death. Sows infected with African swine fever often die around the seventh day after fever, and some die one or two days after symptoms appear.

The mortality rate of African swine fever is as high as 100 percent, so prevention must be done well; the specific measures are as follows:

1. Be highly vigilant against the risk of the epidemic, strictly prohibit transporting live pigs from epidemic areas, and effectively carry out risk prevention work. In places where the swine fever epidemic has occurred, emergency response mechanisms must be launched in strict accordance with requirements; generally, measures such as lockdown, culling, harmless disposal, and disinfection must be taken, and all live pigs, susceptible animals, and products are prohibited from being transported into or out of the lockdown area.

2. Farmers should actively cooperate with local animal disease prevention and control agencies in carrying out disease monitoring and investigation, especially when phenomena such as failure of swine fever vaccine immunization, suspected symptoms, or death from unknown causes occur, and should promptly report them to the local veterinary department.

3. Strengthen feeding management, establish and strictly implement a hygiene and disinfection system, strictly control the entry of people, vehicles, and susceptible animals into the farm, and personnel, vehicles, and items entering and leaving the farm and its production areas must be isolated and disinfected, etc.; keep the pigs as closed as possible, and also avoid contact with wild boars and Ornithodoros soft ticks; it is strictly prohibited to use swill or food waste to feed live pigs.

As an acute swine disease with a high mortality rate and infection rate, African swine fever causes very large losses to farmers, so doing a good job of prevention is very important.