DVM STUDENT PROJECTS
Each summer, a handful of first and second year DVM students interested in production medicine take on a research project in the lab. Atlanta, Georgia hosted the 51st AASV annual meeting. This year nearly 60 student abstracts were submitted for contest consideration, with only 15 of those chosen for oral presentation. Illinois was represented proudly by a total of 13 student presenters, with six selected for oral presentation, and two for poster competition!
What are my barn fans doing?
This study focused on the impact that air movement has on animal health and how that air movement can be optimized. This study looked at how to individualize a barn and find areas in the ventilation system that could be improved. Using the computer-aided design program fusion 360, renderings of a grower-finisher barn were made to scale. The parameters of the barn’s air inlet and outlet speeds were measured. The model of the barn was then put through CFD 2019. This resulted in what would be the optimum air movement into and out of a swine barn while in a computer-generated environment. Setting the computer-generated model as the ideal environment the sampling of facilities on site can be used to highlight weak spots in the ventilation of the given facility. Fixing these weak spots would result in a more uniform ventilation experience for swine, therefore optimizing the animal and human health inside the barn.
While the germicidal capabilities of UVC light are widely known and accepted, their practical use on farm for disinfection of incoming items has come into question. Our results suggest that items entering the farm through a UV chamber must be free of all organic material to maximize the decontamination potential of direct UV-C exposure.
Our first project implied some major flaws with chemical disinfection via the fogger. This project looked a fluid dynamics approach to assessing the efficacy of chemical foggers on swine facilities. By creating a simulation room and a model to see how the fogger projected the disinfectant around the supplies entering the farm, we were able to prove the foggers are ineffective at adequately distributing disinfectant.
If we cannot use foggers or UVC light how do we best decontaminate items brought onto a farm each day? Based on our results, the use of time and temperature treatments, similar to what is already implemented on livestock trucks, maybe a good option to decontaminate items upon entry into farm.
This project explored how veterinarians sample for Influenza A virus (IAV) in pigs post weaning. By comparing the performance of nasal swabs, nasal wipes, oral fluids and air samples for the detection of the virus in a known IAV positive population, we were able to make a clear recommendation to field veterinarians. Additionally, we designed the study to test the efficiency of sampling, and if it may be improved by using objective clinical sign monitors (i.e. cough monitors).
The transmission of Influenza A subtype H3N2 virus between humans and pigs (AKA spillover events) between 2015-2018 are important to understand if we are to grasp the scope of a zoonotic disease like influenza. Using genetic analysis tools such as phylogenetic trees, we determined which strains of the virus are crossing species lines and in which direction so that we can use that information to better monitor the movement and evolution of the virus over time.
Fecal microbiome research has become very popular but is fraught with inconsistent and conflicting results. The goal of this project was to see if a single sample was sufficient to accurately represent the entire microbiome. We found that a single sample is NOT sufficient and that the method in which you sample the feces affects the results.
Foggers stink!
Fogging incoming supplies with a chemical disinfectant is a widely used practice in the swine industry to prevent the introduction of pathogens onto a farm. To be effective all surfaces of that item (box, vaccine bottle, etc.) must come in direct contact with that chemical. Therefore, our study found it impossible to disinfect every surface of such items, implying that aerosolized chemicals do not permeate like a gas, fall like a mist under the forces of gravity. These data suggest that regardless of disinfectant, there are significant physical barriers to the effective decontamination of supplies entering farms.