Labor shortages are putting pressure on swine operations worldwide — and the solution may be closer to the feed room than the hiring office. In this sponsored episode of the Feed Strategy Podcast, Zinpro Discovery Researcher Dr. Lucas Rodrigues makes the case that sow health and labor efficiency are more directly connected than the industry often recognizes. When disease pressure rises and lesions appear, farm staff enter what Rodrigues calls "firefighting mode" — and the resulting burnout drives the staff turnover that ultimately erodes operational results. Rodrigues outlines how trace mineral nutrition can support immune strength, foot and leg health, and reproductive performance to break that cycle, and offers practical guidance on how nutritionists can measure and communicate the value of their programs.
Interview with Dr. Lucus Rodrigues, discovery researcher, Zinpro
Jackie Roembke, editor-in-chief, WATT Feed Brands: Hi everyone, welcome to Feed Strategy Podcast. I'm your host, Jackie Roembke, editor-in-chief of WATT Feed Brands.
This edition of Feed Strategy Podcast is brought to you by Zinpro. For more than 50 years, Zinpro has improved the health and well-being of both animals and people as a pioneer in the research and development of performance trace minerals and innovative nutritional solutions. For more information, please visit Zinpro.com.
Today we’re joined by Zinpro’s discovery researcher Dr. Lucas Rodrigues. He’s here to explore how trace mineral nutrition is being used to improve sow health and labor efficiency. Hi Lucas, how are you today?
Lucas Rodrigues, discovery researcher, Zinpro: Hi Jackie. I'm doing well. How are you doing?
Roembke: I'm doing great. Thank you so much for being here, and we'll just get right into it. But first, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.
Rodrigues: Yeah, sure. I am originally from Brazil. I did vet school in Brazil and then my third year of vet school I started working with pigs and then got a passion for nutrition. So I did a master's in nutrition, worked in Brazil as a field nutritionist for about three years, thought it would be nice to see some snow. So I moved up to Canada, did my Ph.D. there in swine nutrition and health. And then in early 2022, I joined the R&D department at Zinpro as a researcher.
Roembke: Excellent. Now, what role does sow health play in labor efficiency and ROI in swine operations today?
Rodrigues: Yeah, we started thinking more and more about this. So labor shortage is a global issue, I would say. So we're seeing these in the Americas, in some parts of Europe as well and sometimes when you think about the relationship between sow health and labor efficiency, it seems a very distant relationship. But we’re seeing that when you have more healthy sows, the daily work is predictable, right? You have feeding, you have farrowing checks, you have routine care.
When disease pressure comes, you start seeing lesions, you start seeing stress and all these stressors they come into play at the same time. You enter that firefighting mode, right? And that extra workload for the staff obviously create burnout and in many situations will increase that staff turnover, right?
That decrease in well-being will directly impact your operational results. And if you’re impacting your results, you’re impacting your ROI. So in the beginning, we thought that relationship between sow health and labor efficiency was not very direct, let’s say, but we’re seeing more that by improving sow health, we can definitely decrease staff turnover and improve the ROI of the operation.
Roembke: Does sow longevity play a role in improving ROI and labor efficiency?
Rodrigues: I would say a big role. If we think every time a sow is replaced, you have the replacement of that sow, so a new gilt will arrive at the operation. So you have replacement, you have acclimation, you have monitoring, and you have managing that gilt, until that gilt is productive enough to stay in the herd. If you have sows more productive for more parities, you enter a stable cycle in your herd. And from a people standpoint, we need to think that more experienced sows, they’re way easier to handle, right? So you have less troubleshooting on a day-to-day basis, and you have less rework, I would say for those experienced sows because they’re staying in the herd longer.
Longevity, in simple terms, will improve that rhythm of the farm so you have less interruptions. You have a better environment for the staff because you don't have a lot of removals, you don't have a lot of rechecks, you don't have a lot of medical interventions, and obviously you're going to improve your output so that's the tie between longevity, labor, efficiency and ROI.
Roembke: Where can trace mineral nutrition have the greatest impact when it comes to herd health and labor demands?
Rodrigues: Well, from our experience, trace mineral nutrition can support three main areas. I would say, number one, immune strength. Number two, feet and leg health. Number three, repro performance from an immune perspective.
From an immune perspective, if you have more resilient animals by consequence, you're gonna have fewer sick sows and fewer sick piglets by improving their immune competence. Then you're gonna have, from a farm perspective, less injections and fewer extra trips, let's say, to recheck sows, to recheck piglets. On the second front, if you have stronger foot and stronger legs, you're going to most likely reduce lameness. Lameness is the number one or number two, cause of sow removal globally, right? On top of removals, you're gonna have less movement challenge, right? So it's not easy to handle sows with lameness, and we just identified the relationship between repro and lameness.
You have less downstream negative effects on repro as well. And finally, if you improve your repro performance, that's generally tied to sows being healthier, right? So healthier sows will produce more and will require less hands-on interventions, let's say.
That's why we believe that by supporting these three aspects -- immune strength, foot and leg health and repro performance -- trace mineral nutrition can definitely decrease direct or indirect labor intensive interventions.
Roembke: Great information. Now, how would you say that nutritionists can effectively measure and demonstrate the value of trace mineral programs?
Rodrigues: This will vary a little bit on a case by case scenario, but from our experience as well, I think the easiest and more effective way to do it is to connect changes between this new trace mineral program intervention with outcomes of interest, mostly related to repro and longevity, and track them over time. So you basically start with pretty simple before and after comparisons, using few very clear and important metrics. Also, if lameness is a common issue, let's say adding a locomotion score and the claw lesion score is extremely helpful because in many situations this is the mechanism through which trace minerals, especially zinc, manganese and copper, will benefit the sow.
And finally bringing indirect metrics that will for sure impact the efficiency of the operation, right? Health events, staff turnover, staff well-being, the stability of the performance of the operation. One thing I would even emphasize is that at Zinpro we have some good resources for veterinarians and for nutritionists, people can definitely visit Zinpro.com and connect with their local representatives for more.
And there is also a series of free eBooks that people can sign up for, and these will contain information around our research, our global initiatives, and even from a tech support perspective.
Roembke: Just as Lucas said, please visit Zinpro.com/swine for more sow and gilt resources and to sign up for their four-part free eBook series. Thanks again, Lucas, and thanks to you for tuning in.
Rodrigues: Thank you so much.
