Farmscape for March 14, 2013

The director of the University of Guelph's Campbell Centre for Animal Welfare says the introduction of a commercialized version of a new device designed to deliver euthanasia to piglets has come at a good time.
The Zephyr E is a non-penetrating captive bolt device developed at the University of Guelph to deliver pain and stress free euthanasia to piglets.
Testing of a prototype version, conducted on behalf of the U.S. based National Pork Board and Swine Innovation Porc, on 100 neonatal piglets and 150 nursery piglets showed the device to be 100 percent effective.
Dr. Tina Widowski, a professor of animal and poultry science and the director of the Campbell Centre for Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph, says Philipsburg, Pennsylvania based Bock Industries is now manufacturing a commercial version.

Clip-Dr. Tina Widowski-University of Guelph:
Bock Industries has worked with us for the last year or so to build a  model based on our prototype.
The bolt length construction of it, velocity of the bolt, all of that has been matched based on the prototype developed here at the University of Guelph.
Bock Industries provided one of their models to us, the Zepher E, and we recently went out to the farm and field tested it and, at least on neonatal pigs, we got results that were as good if not better than the prototype version from the University of Guelph.
Bock Industries has a web site.
It's bock-industries.com.
Bock Industries also manufactures several other euthanasia and stunning devices.
One is another version of a non-penetrating captive bolt called the TED or the Turkey Euthanasia Device so now all of those devices are available from this one company in North America.

Dr. Widowski says the timing for the introduction of this equipment is good because a lot of producers in a lot of different industries are looking to purchase this type of device.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council