2024 Student Summer Intern Projects

Our summer veterinary student interns, Ayva Bohr and Macy Moore, were both finalists for the Morrison Swine Innovator Prize at the 2024 Allen D. Leman Swine Conference. Ayva and Macy each presented the projects that they completed during their time at Suidae Health & Production. We’re excited to share some highlights from their projects and want to congratulate both Ayva and Macy on a job well done!

Ayva Bohr

For her presentation, Ayva gave an innovative demonstration on data exports and excel tricks that producers and veterinarians can use to make data-driven decisions without collecting any new information at all. Most producers use a production record management software, but may only look at a small weekly summary of the data to make decisions. In some instances, certain pieces of data never make it out of the database and into a summary at all. This poses the question: What are we missing? How can this data be used to its full potential? The objective of her presentation was to open the door for veterinarians and producers to more effectively explore and utilize existing data, thereby enhancing decision-making processes and improving overall operational efficiency. As an example, Ayva exported data from 5 independent sow farms that included individual sow farrowing metrics and employee actions. She shared her finding that across all 5 farms there was an increase in average stillborns per litter as farrowing duration time increased. With this information, decisions can be tailored to the individual farm for the best time to intervene during the farrowing process. There are endless other ways to evaluate specific employee compliance, identify high-risk animals, and detect areas of opportunity with new or improved procedures using data we already have or could easily have at our fingertips.

Macy Moore

Macy’s presentation highlighted an innovative new way to gauge inflammatory status on pig farms. She shared how inflammation has negative implications on the performance of growing pigs and can have a sizable impact on profitability. Serum vitamin A levels can be utilized as a biomarker to quantify inflammation, which correlates with finishing performance. The objectives of her study were to understand if the biomarker average and variation could be correlated to farm PRRSV status and to investigate the necessary sample size for biomarker testing.  Farms with varying PRRSV status and prevalence were enrolled and piglets were bled prior to weaning. Macy found that the inflammatory statuses of the farms were significantly different from each other; however, levels did not appear to be correlated with PRRSV status or production parameters such as pigs weaned per sow per year. This indicates that a universal recommended biomarker threshold cannot be established, but rather farms can use this tool for evaluating the impact of an intervention on inflammation in their herd. She also determined that a randomized sample of 6 full litters of piglets was sufficient to draw conclusions compared to a previously larger recommended sample size. Biomarker testing is an innovative, new way to gauge the success of specific interventions and veterinarians can use this method for efficient and cost-effective evaluation of inflammatory status on the farms they work with.