Elizabeth Hines

Sales of certified organic pork continue to increase, and an increasing number of young farmers are looking to rear hogs with organic or other niche labeling claims that require outdoor access. There is limited research available to support pastured pork operations in developing best management practices for rearing pigs in outdoor environments. The goal of this study was to evaluate the impact of housing on swine performance and pork quality and to build best management strategies for raising hogs on pasture. Pigs (n = 50) from the same sire and farrowing cohort were obtained from 10 separate litters. Pigs were grouped into separate treatments according to average body weights (BW) with equal sex rations among both groups: Indoor (n = 25), and Outdoor (n = 25), with 5 hogs per pen within each treatment. The Indoor groups were housed on 7m2 of solid concrete flooring in a ventilation-controlled barn …

Profitable gold mining began in the United States with the accidental discovery in 1799 of a seventeen-pound gold nugget in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. North Carolina’s gold production peaked between the 1830s and 1840s as hundreds of mines contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to the national economy, necessitating the 1837 construction of a federal Branch Mint in Charlotte to process Piedmont gold. Gold mining suffered a major decline in North Carolina after the discovery of the richer and more extensive gold deposits in California in 1848. However, the North Carolina gold miners who did not join the western rush continued to work the shafts of the Piedmont using increasingly sophisticated European and South American technology, as well as new innovations such as hydraulic mining techniques from California, until the advent of the Civil War. From the end of …

Iron deficiency anemia is a significant problem in piglets, as they are born with insufficient iron stores for supporting their rapid body growth. Further, sows’ milk contains inadequate iron levels for meeting the demands of piglet rapid growth in the pre-wean stage. The forms of iron present in the milk are essential to understanding bioavailability and potential routes for supplementing iron to mitigate iron deficiency anemia in piglets. Recently, our studies showed that H-ferritin (FTH1) is involved in iron transport to different tissues and can be used as an oral iron supplement to correct iron deficiency in rats and monkeys. In this study, we investigate the FTH1 levels in colostrum and milk in Yorkshires-crossbred sows (n = 27) and collected samples at the 1st, 15th, and 28th days of lactation to measure FTH1. Colostrum and milk were found to have FTH1, but there is no significant difference between the different days …

One correction is noted for the paper. The branching fraction was not included in the conversion of the observed cross-section limit, pb to the coupling constants and and the branching fractions and. The inclusion leads to weaker observed exclusion limits on the coupling constants divided by the scale of new physics of and and on the branching fractions and. The predicted exclusion limits on the coupling constants divided by the scale of new physics are and and on the branching fractions and. Updated distributions of the observed upper limits on the coupling constants for combinations of cgt and ugt channels are shown in Figure 10 a and on the branching fractions in Figure 10 b.

Studies on the social-psychological framework known as farmer identity have been conducted in the US, EU, and Australia. The focus of these studies is on understanding how farmer beliefs (ie Identities) translate into on-farm practices. For example, in 2015, Iowa farmers were surveyed and four identities emerged when asked which items were important to being a" Good Farmer." Those identities were used to predict the support of soil and/or water policies in the state. Here, for the first time, we explore the identities of livestock producers. Specifically, Pennsylvania swine producer identities. Data were collected as part of a state-wide biosecurity survey. Eighty-four respondents answered some part of the survey, while 50 respondents completed all 31 items of the" Good Producer" question. Principal components analysis (PCA) was used to explore producer perception of a good producer (ie producer identities …

The group mental model of swine-related biosecurity for producers and experts was assessed and compared using network analysis. The proper implementation of biosecurity plans reduces the risk of biological hazards that could cripple the industry. Recently collected survey data show producer motivation to adopt a biosecurity protocol is not driven solely by the value of the operation (Hines and Falcone, unpublished). Other motivating factors exist for how producers perceive risk relating to biosecurity management. To identify how pig producers and experts conceptualize biosecurity, open-ended survey questions were asked. Survey responses (n = 123) were coded using a newly developed codebook. Intercoder reliability was established using Krippendorff’s a. Code co-occurrence was used to build a network diagram showing producer and expert mental models, or depiction of the interdependent …

Inclusion of soybean meal (SBM) in gestation diets has been decreasing as producers replace amino acid sources with more cost-effective ingredients. In particular, SBM components have been associated with immunoglobulin production and increased nutrition in late gestation has been associated with limited growth performance increases. Yet, it is unknown if SBM inclusion levels in late gestation diets influences offspring growth during the lactation and nursery phases. Therefore, the objective of this project is to investigate the impact of SBM inclusion rates in late gestation on offspring performance. Sows (n= 63) were assigned to one of four diets, 14 days prior to farrowing: A (n= 13; 0% SBM, 13.5% crude protein (CP), B (n= 16; 10% SBM, 13.5% CP), C (n= 17; 30% SBM, 21.5% CP), D (n= 17; 0% SBM, 21.5% CP). Growth performance of piglets was evaluated during lactation. Piglets per diet: A (n= 170), B (n …

In the swine industry, pre-weaning mortality, umbilical hernia incidence and pig market weight are a few contributing factors affecting profitability and welfare on farm. Therefore, the ability to reliably predict any of these outcomes is valuable to swine operations. Mortality during the pre-weaning phase, umbilical hernia incidence and poor-quality finisher pigs can represent a multi-million dollar loss and increase in welfare concerns to the producer. Consequently, the objective of this study was to evaluate whether birth weight (BW), umbilical cord diameter at birth (UCD), and the calculated umbilical diameter at birth to birth weight ratio (UCD:BW), are potential indicators of both placental efficiency and relative defect size in the abdominal musculature as well as reliable predictors of pre-weaning mortality, umbilical hernia incidence, and pig body weight at 150 d of age in a commercial facility. Mixed sex commercial …