How to treat pigs with high fever disease? Detailed explanation of prevention and treatment methods

Swine high fever disease is a disease with relatively high morbidity and mortality, namely swine unknown high fever syndrome. The main clinical manifestations of affected pigs are elevated body temperature, depression, loss of appetite or complete refusal to eat, difficulty breathing, panting, and some pigs have symptoms such as reddened and purplish skin, with a few having bleeding points on the hair follicles. Let us take a look below at the treatment methods for swine high fever disease!

Characteristics of the onset of swine high fever disease

1. It occurs in seasons with relatively high temperatures, has a long course of disease, generally about 5 to 20 days, and has a high mortality rate.

2. Pig farms that do not attach importance to epidemic prevention work, whose technical personnel have poor health care concepts, that do not strictly close off the pig farm, and that do not carry out systematic health care for the pig herd have severe outbreaks.

3. The body weight of affected pigs is generally 20 to 80 kg, with the highest morbidity, and weaned piglets can also be affected.

4. The effect of drug treatment is not very ideal, and pig farms that use drugs indiscriminately have a higher mortality rate.

Clinical symptoms of swine high fever disease

1. Growing and finishing pigs: Growing and finishing pigs often show acute onset. Affected pigs suddenly lie down and cannot stand, breathe heavily, have obvious respiratory symptoms, and severe individuals develop pneumonia lesions, which later turn into purulent pneumonia, and they die from respiratory failure.

2. Nursery pigs and piglets: After nursery pigs and piglets become affected, their body temperature rises, breathing accelerates, and they have sneezing, coughing, runny nose, increased eye discharge, and like to huddle together, similar to flu symptoms. Piglets that survive are mostly accompanied by respiratory symptoms, are emaciated, have pale skin, rough hair, reduced resistance, and are prone to secondary infections by other diseases.

3. Pregnant sows: Individual animals in the pregnant sow herd have obvious high fever symptoms, rapid breathing, lie down, complete refusal to eat, and sows in late pregnancy may abort. The rest generally have a course of intermittent low fever, showing reduced appetite, poor mental state, yellow urine, dry feces, and so on.

4. Lactating sows: The morbidity of lactating sows is not high. The large group shows anorexia, and individual severe cases suddenly develop respiratory symptoms, elevated body temperature, complete refusal to eat, lie down and cannot stand, and reduced or absent lactation. After the course of the disease, reproductive function is affected to varying degrees. The morbidity of piglets during the lactation period is also not high, and individual piglets have symptoms of coughing, fever, and pneumonia.

Prevention and control measures for swine high fever disease

1. In order to prevent the purchase of latently infected pigs, it is best to insist on self-breeding and self-raising. Attention should be paid to the feeding and management of the pig herd, and various stress factors should be minimized as much as possible.

(1) In summer, heat prevention and cooling work should be done well, ventilation in the pig house should be increased, and cooling measures such as spraying with cool water should be used, promoting evaporation and heat dissipation through convection. All doors and windows of the pig house should be opened to allow air convection. When the temperature is relatively high, wash the pigs' bodies with cold water or install spraying devices, spraying 4 to 6 times a day, and add ice-cooling and heat-relieving feed to the feed.

(2) When it is hot, the stocking density should be reduced. Growing pigs should have a living space of more than 0.8 sq m, and finishing houses should preferably be 1.2 sq m per pig. The number of pigs per pen should preferably be about 10 to 12, maintaining a reasonable stocking density and cooling can effectively control swine unknown high fever and respiratory diseases.

(3) From farrowing, nursery, to finishing, strictly adopt the "all-in, all-out" feeding method, avoid mixing pigs with too large an age difference in the same group, minimize the number of times pigs are moved between pens and mixed into groups, and ensure that the pig herd in the same pig house is all transferred out at the same time. After each batch of pigs is sent to market, the pig house must be strictly washed and disinfected, left empty for a few days, and then new pigs can be moved in.

2. The pig house and environment both need to be regularly disinfected with a virus purifier to reduce the content of pathogenic microorganisms. Use quicklime, plant ash water, and chemical disinfectants to disinfect once a day, alternating multiple disinfectants.

3. Ensure the feed is fresh and free of mold, improve the nutritional level of the pigs, and enhance the non-specific resistance of the pigs. You can use honeysuckle, sweet wormwood, houttuynia, isatis root, groundsel, plantain, Artemisia annua, club grass, lophatherum, sweet mulberry leaf, wild chrysanthemum, isatis leaf, loquat leaf, raw gypsum, cactus (thorns removed and mashed), earthworm, dandelion, and Andrographis paniculata, etc., mixed together or boiled individually in water, and let the pigs drink it or mix it into the feed for feeding.