Barley

[Blaithin]

Shouldn’t have to worry too much about liver issues then. Usually has Tylan with it as well.

[burnt]

Shouldn’t have to worry too much about liver issues then. Usually has Tylan with it as well.

There's no infallible silver bullet when it comes to liver abscesses. We have fed up to 100 of these guys at one time in the past, but always on corn before this summer.

Usually out of that number, we can expect 2 or 3 to start going "woody" on us.

They just seem to stop, their hair will look a bit spikey, they might get very stiff, and their condition looks tough and unhappy.

Likely a case of chronic, mild acidosis?

The one batch, we took from about 750 to 1550 - 1600 on whole corn. They will have celebrated a birthday here before they left.

The last bigger bunch we put thru here 2 summers ago - I nearly lost my shirt.

The bunch before that just made a killing.

If one could predict the markets...but it appears that the margin is pretty well determined by the purchase price the day you buy them.

Better take the next truck to town then if they get that tough look.

[Blaithin]

When they go past their best before date I always noticed more founders than anything.

Most poor doers that started to appear were usually called on account of BVD. Diet and housing during finishing is stressful and can just plain run them down.

I was also told liver abscesses, while obviously not great health or conversion wise, are more of a slaughter issue. Condemned livers, loss of product, etc. Never, ever necropsied a fat that came back with liver as cause of death. Some had small pockets of abscesses but more often than not those were actually linked to Fluke. The scrawny buggers that you could watch die for weeks with nothing ever seeming to help them never usually had liver signs.

Although the animals I was around had DDGs in the ration which helped cut down on grain amounts while still keeping up performance. Lowered acidosis risk somewhat.