What are the clinical manifestations of subhealth in pig herds?

Subhealth, as the name implies, is a state between health and disease. Seizing this transitional link is the key to reversing the situation. At present, subhealth is widespread in pig farms in China, and is especially obvious in sow herds. In a sense, improving the subhealth state will achieve herd stability and increased profits.

The clinical manifestations of subhealth in pig herds are the following 10 aspects:

1. Eating disorder: feed intake varies from time to time, appetite fluctuates, and the sense of satiety is sometimes strong and sometimes weak.

2. Movement disorder: reluctant to move, and even when driven, unwilling to walk.

3. Reproductive disorder: abnormal estrus, repeated mating without conception, return to estrus, abortion, stillbirths and weak piglets, low survival rate, little or no milk, prolonged farrowing, etc.

4. Excretion disorder: reduced volume of feces and urine, urine yellow to yellow-red with a very strong odor, dry and hard feces in ball shape, or normal fecal volume but insufficient moisture with the center of the feces soft and the outer surface hard with a layer of hard crust, and failure to defecate at fixed times and locations.

5. Nutritional disorder: slow growth, pale skin, rough and dull coat, emaciation, poor body condition, low feed conversion rate.

6. Visual disorder: increased eye discharge, tear stains, red eyes.

7. Immune disorder: little or no antibody production after vaccination, severe complications from normal immunization, strong stress response, enlarged inguinal lymph nodes.

8. Stress disorder: when encountering stress factors such as immunization, regrouping, castration, drug injection, high temperature, etc., disease outbreaks occur, with skin congestion, body surface abscesses (or needle lumps), and "regular onset of disease" (such as piglets becoming ill after moving from the farrowing house to the nursery; becoming ill right after vaccine immunization or castration, etc.), and respiratory diseases, diarrhea, etc. are prone to occur.

9. Mental disorder: poor mental state, dull eyes, unwilling to look toward people, tail flat or drooping, head not raised high, and turning the head weakly.

10. Behavioral disorder: inactive when standing, not lying down when resting; dirty body surface, unusual or foul odor in the pen; loud or hoarse calls; calls at night or obvious panting, etc. Hu Xinxin