Farmscape for March 17, 2016

The Regional Marketing and Technical Services Manager with AcuShot Needle-Free says needle-free injection is most efficiently used when administering compounds to large numbers of young pigs.
Needle-free injection uses high pressure high velocity to blast compounds through the skin, replacing conventional needles.
Mike Agar, the Regional Marketing and Technical Services Manager with AcuShot Needle-Free, says the technology is typically used when administering compounds to high volumes of pigs where when, using conventional needles, there would be the greatest risk of a broken  needle.

Clip-Mike Agar-AcuShot Needle-Free:
Typically vaccine is the number 1 driver of the use of the equipment.
There's high volume immunizations of young pigs in particular.
Those immunizations are in bunches of animals and in one group at a time so it's a high risk environment for needle breaks and things like that so it's typically vaccinations, typically circovirus or circovirus mycoplasma combinations.
Those are typically done at about age of weaning when you're getting ready to segregate those pigs out into a nursery so they're 21 days old, let's say.
But we also do health optimizing injections of supplemental iron when they're baby pigs 3 to 5 days old to help them get a really solid start.
So they supplement those baby pigs with an injection of iron, about 3 to 5 days of age and typically in Canada we don't do a whole lot more injections than that of pigs unless we're treating them with an antibiotic if they get sick for welfare and health issues and the odd vaccine maybe up around 70 pounds but typically we're vaccinating pigs at 21 days of age.
The might be 12 kilograms up to about 50 pounds.

Agar says those who use needle-free have eliminated any risk of broken needles ending up in the meat.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork