A low tech solution exists for a common high stress hog barn situation, says a hog barn supplier selling a new product.
The common ear tagger can be adapted to take blood samples.
That means veterinarians aren’t needed and barn workers don’t need to undertake the onerous task of wrestling a big sow into a snout holder and keeping it there while blood is extracted from the jugular vein.
“It allows you to test and pull a blood sample from the animals in a way that’s less stressful for the animal and certainly less stressful and more safe for the stockman,” said Rick Bergmann of Paradigm Agri Solutions in Steinbach, Man., who markets the product.
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The Tego uses a common ear tagger, a custom pin and a small card-like collector that is inserted into the tagger. The pin is used to punch into a vein in the ear, and the card collects the blood.
The blood-containing card can then be put in a small envelope and taken or mailed to a laboratory.
Bergmann said the system was invented in Australia and is commonly used there. Laboratories in the United States have tested its efficacy and Canadian labs are now doing the same.
Bergmann hopes to sell the product to hog barn operators and workers who are tired of the stress of restraining sows and to veterinarians who are tired of doing manual labour well beneath their skill level.
“It allows the veterinarian to work on what he’s trained for, and that’s helping the producer with health issues, versus the manual task of extracting blood, which any stockman can do,” said Bergmann.
