welfare – Page 2 – Swine in Minnesota

Vet Student Attitudes about Swine Change after Lecture and Farm Visit

In this new publication from the Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, Dr. Perle Zhitnitskiy from the UMN swine group, in collaboration with Dr. Beth Ventura explores the impact that various educational initiatives have on first-year veterinary students attitudes towards swine production.

Key Points

First-year students undergo 1-hour lecture and one farm visit in their first year of the curriculum.
Knowledge and attitudes towards pigs improved after the educational initiatives.
Students became more segmented in their overall view of swine production.
Provision of enrichment did not increase students’ satisfaction with the level of animal welfare on the farm.

Impact of increasing age on pig performance and belly nosing prevalence in a commercial multisite production system

Today, we share last week Science Page from the Bob Morrison’s Swine Health Monitoring Project. The previous editions of the science page are available on our website.

Dr. Jamil E. G. Facci –Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)- and colleagues evaluate the relationship between current commercial weaning ages and post-weaning resilience to stress. In relation to this topic and for further details, visit the full work published in the Journal of Animal Science.

Key Points

Increasing weaning age has an impact on pig production metrics and behavioral indicators.
Examining decisions about weaning age is important in today’s global scenario of antibiotic reduction and increased welfare concerns.
The reduction of removal and mortality during the nursery phase is an important impact of increased weaning age.

What do US producers and veterinarians think about antibiotic-free production?

This recent open-access publication in Frontiers expends beyond the realm of swine production and raises the question raising animals without using antibiotics. Dr. Singer from the University of Minnesota in collaboration with multiple other institutions surveyed US producers and veterinarians to gather their thoughts on the topic.

Science Page: Docking the tail or not: Effect on tail damage, skin lesions and growth performance

This is our Friday rubric: every week a new Science Page from the Bob Morrison’s Swine Health Monitoring Project. The previous editions of the science page are available on our website.

This week, we are sharing a report by Dr. Yuzhi Li regarding the effects of tail docking in pigs.

Key points:

Many swine producers have been looking for an alternative to tail docking since it is a painful procedure for pigs.
A study examining welfare and performance of pigs with docked and undocked tails was performed
Performance was unaffected by tail docking, and it reduced incidence of tail damage

A study was conducted to evaluate the effect of tail docking on welfare and performance of growing-finishing pigs. Pigs, including 120 pigs that were tail-docked at birth and 120 pigs that remained with intact tails were used. Pigs were housed in 8 pens of 30 pigs in a
confinement barn for 16 weeks, with 4 pens each housing pigs of both sexes with docked or intact tails.

Results indicate that tail docking did not affect daily gain, feed intake, gain to feed ratio. During the study period, 5% of docked pigs were removed from their home pen due to tail damage, compared to 21% of intact pigs were removed for reasons associated with tail biting or tail damage. Consequently, 97% of docked pigs and 90% of intact pigs were sold for full value.

This study suggests that tail docking did not affect growth performance of pigs or eliminate occurrence of tail biting, but it reduced the incidence of
tail damage in pigs housed in a confinement system.

For more details, take a look at the full results table.

Understanding Tail-Biting in Pigs through Social Network Analysis

Today, we are sharing a publication on pig welfare by our colleagues in the Outreach and Extension center at the University of Minnesota, Drs. Li, Zhang, Johnston and Martin. More specifically, the researchers focused their study on the effect of social network on tail-biting in pigs. The full-text of the article is available in open-access on the website of the journal Animals.

We know that pigs are social animals and that they naturally form social structures to maintain a cohesive group. However, we have little understanding of how those group dynamics affect deleterious behavior like tail-biting. To answer the question of the association between social structure and incidence of tail-biting in pigs, the researchers created 18 groups of 8 pigs.

6 groups were Littermates: all the 8 pigs were born from and nursed by the same sow.
6 groups were Half-group of littermates: 4 pigs were born from the same sow whereas the 4 others came from the litter of another sow.
6 groups were Non-littermates: all 8 pigs were born from a different sow.

Each group was housed in a nursery pen after weaning where the pigs stayed for the duration of the study until they reached 10 weeks of age. Researchers analyzed growth performances, tail injuries, and behavior.

Growth performances did not differ among groups in this study. However, littermates showed a higher incidence of tail-biting with 15% of the pigs showing chewing or puncture wounds with visible blood but no infection.

Behavior was analyzed by videotaping the pigs 2 weeks after they were placed into their pens, 1 week later when each group was moved together to a new pen and 1 week after the move. The video recordings were viewed by a trained researcher to determine association interactions among pigs. Pigs were considered associated with each other if they were lying together frequently and with more than 50% or more of their bodies in contact with each other. For each pig (white circle in the figure above), researchers measured the direct association between each individual pig and its penmates (1) as well as the peripheral association among the penmates (2).

At the individual pig level, littermates had lower direct association than non-littermates and half-group of littermates, suggesting that littermates might be less socially connected directly among themselves. However, the indirect association among penmates did not vary.

Another interesting observation, although statistically insignificant, is that littermates appeared to spend less time in the lying posture than other groups.

Overall, littermates had a lower strength of social connections, more absent ties, and fewer weak ties, compared to non-littermates and half-group of littermates. Less social connection with pen-mates might predispose pigs in littermate pens to development of tail-biting. Regardless of litter origin, most pigs appeared connected by weak social ties and few pigs formed strong social ties with their pen mates.

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the association between social structure and incidence of tail-biting in pigs. Pigs (n = 144, initial weight = 7.2 ± 1.57 kg, 4 weeks of age) were grouped based on their litter origin: littermates, non-littermates, and half-group of littermates. Six pens (8 pigs/pen) of each litter origin were studied for 6 weeks. Incidence of tail injury and growth performance were monitored. Behavior of pigs was video recorded for 6 h at 6 and 8 weeks of age. Video recordings were scanned at 10 min intervals to register pigs that were lying together (1) or not (0) in binary matrices. Half weight association index was used for social network construction. Social network analysis was performed using the UCINET software. Littermates had lower network density (0.119 vs. 0.174; p < 0.05), more absent social ties (20 vs. 12; p < 0.05), and fewer weak social ties (6 vs. 14, p < 0.05) than non-littermates, indicating that littermates might be less socially connected. Fifteen percent of littermates were identified as victimized pigs by tail-biting, and no victimized pigs were observed in other treatment groups. These results suggest that littermates might be less socially connected among themselves which may predispose them to development of tail-biting.