July 2025 - Journal FINAL - Flipbook - Page 4
Health
Setting Your Standards
FOR HEALTH
Adam Schelkopf, DVM
Health Director
Pipestone Management
Dr. Adam Schelkopf, originally from DeKalb, Illinois, developed a
passion for swine medicine early on while working on farms and joining
his father on vet calls. He earned his DVM from the University of Illinois
in 2012 and now serves as Health Director for Pipestone Management,
advancing herd health and operational performance for producers.
Adequate. Mediocre. Tolerable. These are not
adjectives we want to use to describe the standards we
have for aspects of our business. So why would we ever
accept these terms when it comes to the standards we
have for pig health? Maybe we don’t think of having
standards for health. Or maybe we don’t have the right
vision of where our standards should be. Let’s take a
little deeper look and evaluate how we think about
swine health standards.
De昀椀ning our standards does not need to be
complicated. Here are three key components that are
integral to systems that have high standards of health:
• Sow farm health/wean pig health
• System design
• Biosecurity
Boiled down, this simply asks: What is the pig’s
potential? Is the system built to reach that potential?
Can we protect its health so it can thrive?
Wean Pig Health Starts at the Sow Farm
Starting with sow farm health, this is arguably the
easiest place to de昀椀ne a standard. Over time,
that standard has evolved as we’ve gained more
information and improved our health management
strategies. For a while, being PRRS-negative was the
benchmark—and not much more. With what we know
today, it’s time to set a higher standard for the health
of the pigs we choose to raise.
The data is clear—starting with a pig that is not only
PRRS-negative but also negative for Mycoplasma and
In昀氀uenza, and free from speci昀椀c bacterial pressures,
offers signi昀椀cant biological and economic advantages.
Add to that a later weaning age—24 days—and
you’ve got a pig set up for success. If we want to run
more productive and more pro昀椀table farms, it’s time
to raise our standards.
4 | PIPESTONE JOURNAL
Your System Design
Next, we look at system design. To maximize the
potential of our pigs, the system must be built to
minimize the impact of health challenges. This is often
the hardest area to de昀椀ne standards—most systems
aren’t built from scratch. They’re pieced together over
time and are constantly a work in progress. It’s great
to have goals for what our system would look like if we
were starting from a blank canvas. The key is to pull
the most critical elements from that ideal design and
establish them as our must-have standards.
