Weaned pigs with diarrhea. What would you do?

General swine health questions, bio-security, vet recommendations
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craiglibby
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Weaned pigs with diarrhea. What would you do?

Post by craiglibby » Thu Apr 01, 2021 12:01 pm

Hello all! We have a litter of pigs that have developed diarrhea over the last 24-48 hours. They are almost 7 weeks old and were weaned a little over 2 weeks ago. Demeanor, temperament and attitude haven't changed at all. Still very lively, tails curled, eating heartily. If you didn't know about the diarrhea, you wouldn't know anything was wrong. They were on Moorman's Burst starter (21.5% protein, w/Denegard) up until just over a week ago. We didn't switch them cold turkey; we weaned them from that (mixed the burst starter and regular starter) to a standard ground/milled starter (18% protein) over a period of a few days. They've been on the ground feed now, solely, for not quite a week, but just started having diarrhea in the last day or so. We thought that we would have noticed any diarrhea sooner if it was feed related, so that's why we want to know...what would you do?
The 3 most common solutions we've heard about are to 1) add some rolled oats to simply try and slow down their digestive tract; 2) give Baytril ASAP; 3) give SpectoGard to stop the diarrhea. Is one of these better than the others? Do you have any other solutions?

mjw1980
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Re: Weaned pigs with diarrhea. What would you do?

Post by mjw1980 » Wed Apr 07, 2021 7:50 am

I would take a fecal to the vet. Young animals are very likely to have parasites.

zamora
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Re: Weaned pigs with diarrhea. What would you do?

Post by zamora » Wed May 05, 2021 6:33 am

Yes, that sounds like a parasite issue to me. I had the same problem two years ago with a couple of my pigs and it was truly a frustrating experience. Then I've met the perfect vet and I paid him to come to my property in Germany every day to treat the pigs until their diarrhea was over. I can give you his number if you want, maybe he can suggest something.

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