Pork Producers Encouraged to Report Symptoms of Shakers

Nov 30, 2020

The Manager of the Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network is encouraging pork producers to report any symptoms shakers, a rare condition that affects newborn piglets. The Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network has released its swine disease surveillance report for the third quarter of 2020.

CWSHIN Manager Dr. Jete Christensen says the detection of unusual clinical signs, unusual presentations on farms has improved and shakers is one of these unusual conditions.

Clip-Dr. Jete Christensen-Canada West Swine Health Intelligence Network:

Shakers is when you see newborn piglets, they're shaking, they're trembling. It doesn’t necessarily cause any deaths but piglets can have difficulty nursing so they could get weak from that. It was seen in one farm or one operation and it occurred suddenly in gilt litters or first parity litters and it wasn't necessarily all the piglets in a litter that was affected.

It could only be a few of them and the pigs were doing OK so they weaned and they saw these shaking piglets for about a month and then it suddenly disappeared. We don't know very much about shakers. There's a couple of viruses that may cause this type of shaking.There are other causes of it too but we have no clear picture of what is going on in our region.

There is an interest among the practitioners to learn a little bit more and figure out exactly what is going on so we can only encourage any producers to call your vet, call your practitioner if you see these newborn shaking piglets so we can figure out exactly what the causes of this is, whether it's a virus or it's something else.

Source : Farmscape

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