Logo image
Back
Altering the timing of an immunocastration vaccine tooptimise pig performance
Conference paper   Open access

Altering the timing of an immunocastration vaccine tooptimise pig performance

A.K. Lealiifano, J.R. Pluske, R.R. Nicholls, F.R. Dunshea and B.P. Mullan
Australasian Pig Science Association
Manipulating Pig Production XII. Proceedings of the 12th Australasian Pig Science Association (APSA) Biennial Conference (Werribee, Australia, 22/11/2009–25/11/2009)
2009
pdf
timing_of_immunocastration_vaccine.pdfDownloadView
Published (Version of Record) Open Access

Abstract

Entire male pigs are more efficient and leaner than surgical castrates, but ’boar taint’ can compromise eating quality. Vaccination of boars with a gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) vaccine (Improvac®, Pfizer Ltd, Parkville, VIC) can eliminate boar taint, and allows pigs to retain all of the performance attributes of entire males up until the time they receive the second vaccination, normally four to five weeks pre-slaughter (Dunshea et al., 2001). However increases in backfat depth (P2) and feed conversion ratio (FCR) compared to entire males has limited the uptake of this technology. If giving the second vaccination closer to the time of slaughter could eliminate boar taint, there would be less of a cost in lost production to producers. An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that reducing the time between administration of the second vaccination with the GnRH vaccine and their slaughter will reduce the impact on P2 and FCR while still reducing boar taint.

Details

Metrics

64 File views/ downloads
129 Record Views
Logo image