Antimicrobial use in lactating sows, piglets, nursery, and grower-finisher pigs on swine farms in Ontario, Canada during 2017 and 2018

BACKGROUND: Data on antimicrobial use (AMU) in pig production are needed for the development of good antimicrobial stewardship practices to reduce the risk of antimicrobial resistance in bacteria that can cause illness in animals and humans. In Canada, there is a lack of quantitative data on AMU in the farrowing and nursery stages of pig production. This study aimed to determine which antimicrobial active ingredients are currently used in farrowing, nursery, and grower-finisher herds in the province of Ontario, Canada, and to quantify AMU using various metrics. We collected data on herd demographics, biosecurity, health status, and AMU during one production cycle from 25 farrowing and 25 nursery herds in Ontario, between May 2017 and April 2018, and obtained data from 23 Ontario grower-finisher herds during the same time frame from the Public Health Agency’s Canadian Integrated Program for Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance. We applied frequency measures, and weight-, and dose-based metrics to the data. RESULTS: In all pigs, the highest quantity of AMU was administered in-feed. By all routes of administration and compared to other production stages, nursery pigs used more antimicrobials in mg/kg biomass and the number of Canadian defined daily doses per 1000 pig-days (dose(CA) rate), while grower-finisher pigs used more antimicrobials in total kilograms and the number of Canadian defined daily doses per pig. In suckling pigs in some herds, there was routine disease prevention use of ceftiofur, an antimicrobial active ingredient categorized as very highly important in human medicine by Health Canada. The top antimicrobial used in each stage of pig production often varied by the metric used. There was producer-reported growth promotion use of antimicrobials in suckling and grower-finisher feed. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study provide a current picture of AMU in pigs in Ontario and can be used as a basis for further research on AMU in farrowing and nursery herds in Canada. Our findings confirm that it would be useful to include farrowing and nursery herds in routine AMU surveillance in Canada. A future analysis using data from this project will examine factors that affect the quantity of AMU. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40813-022-00259-w.