Comment 3 for bug 1274444

Ok so the <N> is both the priority and facility numbers combined. Where the lowest 3 bits are priority and any upper bits are facility. By default any userspace log is 1, and only kernel messages originating from the kernel can be 0.

http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/ABI/testing/dev-kmsg

So this sounds like something that needs to be patched in sysloggers and not the kernel.