When All Hell Broke Loose: Our PRRS Outbreak
She was nestled in the middle of the gestation barn, far away from the door. When she didn’t get up to eat that morning, Kyle Baade, owner of Baade Genetics in southeast Nebraska, didn’t think much of it. He thought the sow might have hurt a pad. The next day, three sows beside her didn’t get up to eat either, so he grabbed a thermometer. The four sows had temperatures ranging from 102 to 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Baade pulled blood and sent it in to be tested.
Meanwhile, all hell broke loose while he awaited the results.
Sows began aborting. Some even died. All Baade could think about – right, wrong or indifferent – was that he needed to move the sows from the gestation barn into the farrowing house.
“I thought if they did farrow early, and there was a chance the pigs were going to live, they sure weren’t going to do it in the gestation barn on slats. And, honestly, it was going to be easier to clean up on my part – to get deads out and clean up afterbirth,” Baade says.
But the effort didn’t help at all.
In a group of about 27 sows, 10 had just farrowed before the first sow went off feed. Of the additional sows left to farrow, five died. Some pigs were born alive, but sows wouldn’t lactate. They lost 100% of everything that farrowed within a couple of days after the first symptom was observed.
“The sows wouldn't push farrowing. We had litters of 10 to 14 live pigs, but within three days, they'd all be dead. We thought the sows would be saved, if we got everything out. But that didn't make a difference. They died, too,” Baade says.
Of the 18 sows that were recently bred for April litters, 11 maintained a pregnancy and farrowed litters. The litter sizes were essentially half as big as normal, he says, with about four to six pigs in a litter.
“I didn't see any mummies, regardless of size. The pigs that were born were all normal and viable. We just had about half the numbers that we should have,” Baade says. “At 7 to 14 days of age, the pigs would look a little rough. The sows had no appetite. As time progressed, the pigs didn’t get any bigger for a week or two – just fuzzier haired.”
They took longer to bloom, but in terms of health, Baade says he didn’t notice any fallout aside from being a little bit fuzzy early on the sow. After they weaned the sows, the sows cycled like normal, too.
“The first 10 days were hell. After that, if you were a visitor showing up, you'd have no idea that we had any issues. You'd have no clue that we were taking skid loader buckets full of dead pigs to the compost pile,” he says. “I finally just quit counting.”
On Dec. 15, a derecho windstorm caused some damage at Baade Genetics. Photo by Kyle Baade.
The Results Are In
By the time they got lab results back, about two weeks after the break, the storm had died down a little, Baade says. The results pointed to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).
This was Baade’s first major disease break since he took over the herd from John Penner in 2013. Today, Baade Genetics is an 80-sow operation that primarily focuses on raising Hampshire, Yorkshire, Duroc and crossbred showpigs for youth in 4-H and FFA. They also run a small boar stud business and offer semen on select boars.
“From a biosecurity standpoint, Penner’s operation was top of the line,” Baade says. “In order to bring in new genetics onto the farm, pigs had to be labbed in (through cesarean section). Up until 2010, before we started our boar stud, we didn’t even have worms on the place. In 2000, the farm opened up. For us, the only thing we bring in is herd boars we buy whether from a show or a farm privately. We quarantine and do multiple bleeds to bring stuff in.”
Baade understands that most will hear “showpig” and think PRRS came on to the farm via foot or pig traffic. His best guess is that the disease came onto the farm via wind.
“There was a big derecho windstorm a few weeks before we broke with PRRS,” he says. “The only traffic we had within a month of our outbreak was a propane truck that maybe came once a week to deliver propane. Aside from daily living, a propane truck was only source within 100 yards of the facilities.”
Regardless of where you want to point the finger, Baade says it doesn’t add up.
“I would have thought PRRS would have struck the hogs outside in the Cargill unit or something of that nature,” he says. “Or even a sow closer to the door if it could have blown in. That's what doesn't make any sense to me – why it was that one? However, I don't know what other finger to point at beside wind.”
Of the eight to 10 litters that farrowed prior to the disease break, Baade says he never saw any symptoms. This is hard for him to understand to this day because their farrowing house is basically one building separated into three rooms with a walk-through door and a solid wall. It uses the same pit, flush-system-style manure handling.
In addition, he houses his herd boars in turnaround gestation crates next to the sows who got sick. Of the eight boars, four experienced clinical signs of loss of appetite, fever and swelling of their testicles – bigger than a basketball.
“Semen quality went down in terms of number of doses and viable, good sperm able to settle,” Baade explains. "Although the PCR samples on the semen that we collected never tested positive, the boars were unarguably sick. Looking at them, there's no way that you could say that they didn't catch it with the loss of appetite and the testicle swelling.”
He also finds it hard to believe they kept PRRS isolated to one area of their farm.
“The craziest thing to me is we've got a 20-foot hallway to our double-L nursery where we had November-born hogs when we broke in January. We never saw anything abnormal from a development standpoint on any of those. When we broke, we moved those hogs from the nursery to our finisher, which is a couple hundred yards north of that building and put them on the east side of the slatted finisher. Also, up in our finisher on the west side, we had our summer-born July and August hogs we were finishing out. We never saw a single symptom up there and never had a PRRS-positive test in our quarterly bleeds,” he describes.
How something could blow into an enclosed gestation barn and wreak the havoc it did baffles Baade to this day.
An experience like this makes you do better, Baade says as he looks toward the next generation. Photo by Laura Baade.
PRRS Doesn’t Care Who You Are
What did he learn from this devastating outbreak that took away his 2022 county fair pig crop?
“PRRS does not care whether you are a showpig producer. PRRS does not care whether you have two sows or 30,000,” Baade says.
When his farm broke, a commercial farm north of theirs broke with the same strain within 24 hours – seemingly at the same time.
“The worst part was that it felt like it was nothing I did. I hadn’t traipsed a bunch of people through our place. It was a slow time of year. The pig that showed first signs was as well-guarded as any pig on the place. It showed me that you can do everything right in your mind and it can still come out wrong,” Baade says.
Nonetheless, an experience like this makes you do better, he says. He’s been taking a long look at what he can do differently on his farm to prevent another PRRS outbreak.
“Not to make excuses, but because we are showpig-focused, we do have some on-farm visitors and customers that want to see the product they are buying. Whether that is herd boars for semen sales or a showpig that a family buys to compete with or a bred female from one of our online sales. To me, it’s a non-negotiable viewpoint that people still want to see what they are buying,” he says.
Because of this, they’ve stepped up their ability to present what they have to offer for sale by using a professional vendor with better equipment and skills to convey what they are offering.
Baade has also been weighing the decision to vaccinate or not.
“I’d have been more inclined if the test results that we got would have scientifically stated, ‘If I used this vaccine, I’d be 95% plus protected.’ When the professionals say we need those results to be effective and we don’t see those, that’s what makes it a gray area. If it’s not what the scientific data says it should be, how can they scientifically argue you need to do it?” he says.
Although he’s not sure if that’s the right mindset to have, it’s where he is at today.
“It's hard to know what you don’t know,” Baade adds. “If we would have vaccinated, maybe we wouldn’t have seen symptoms. But I know what we saw was just as bad as a farm that was vaccinated.”
Kyle and Laura Baade with their children (l to r) Betsy, Anders and Callan. Photo by Blue Skies Photography.
Don’t Stop Talking
It was a depressing time in Baade’s life. He’s since learned that it helps to talk about what he went through as much as anything.
“My wife and I are more than willing to talk about it with anyone now; we have a tale to tell,” he says. “It sucked. We never want to relive that story. The scary thing for me is that I don’t necessarily know how to make sure we never relive that story except completely get out of raising hogs. And there is no way that is going to happen.”
Laura Baade, Kyle’s wife, admits it was hard on their marriage and put a strain on their family.
For example, Baade says it was hard to be out in the barn when pigs were dying. For days in a row, he would come inside, head down to the basement and watch NetFlix to pass the time during the day.
“I remember my wife asking, ‘Aren’t you going to do something?’ I was like, ‘What do you want me to do? Whether I haul deads now or in three hours is irrelevant as to what I accomplish the rest of the day.’ I just needed to let my mind churn a bit,” he says.
Baade later found out that a friend’s farm broke with PRRS in early December, just a month before Baade did. It wasn’t until Baade opened up about his outbreak that his friend finally opened up about his.
“We were able to talk about what we had seen, what we did and how we handled it. It helped a lot,” he says. “My best advice is to find someone to talk to. I don’t understand why as an industry we think it is so noble to hide our shortfalls. Everybody experiences the same problems and instead of potential growth, we limit the ability to re-direct because we think it’s only us and it’s not.”
The truth is PRRS is devastating. But Baade knows they weren’t the first farm to go through it, and they won’t be the last.
“It’s OK to not be ‘living the dream’ every day,” he says. “PRRS takes time to run its course. It will get better whether it’s because it runs its course and you keep chugging along doing what you’re doing, or whether you shift directions completely and get out. Life is going to move on, and it will all be fine, maybe even better.”
More from Farm Journal's PORK:
Wind, PRRS and Pig Farm Biosecurity: Learn from Our Outbreak
Persistent PRRS Strains Pose Challenges for Pork Producers
PRRS Strain 1-4-4: The Most Dramatic Strain I’ve Seen, Yeske Says
Naïve or Not? The Never-Ending Dilemma of Sow Farm PRRS Status
PRRS: Deciphering the Mystery Disease
Researchers Look for Ways to Control PRRS Via the Microbiome
