Piglet Health and Welfare in the Nursery

Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Welfare by admin on July 23, 2015

Piglets experience intense stress at weaning. The reason is the sudden change in their physical environment, social group and diet. Weaning under typical farm conditions can result in weight loss, aggression, belly nosing and the increased chance of diarrhoea and other diseases, which is connected with the reduction of the productivity.  The problem appears to be largely psychological, as young pigs are not prepared to handle so many changes at once.

Obviously the weaning age in the industry is earlier and more abrupt than natural it is important to prepare piglets for their big step of weaning. This is possible with stimulate the pigs with feed pre-weaning by using tray feeders, providing mash feed and the use of enrichment to encourage exploring. Next to an early start of feeding, all kind of increased social interaction before weaning helps to reduce weaning stress. To emphasize is the use of enrichment, especially for nursery pigs, because it can distract pigs from negative behaviour and increase the exploration activity and the feeding acceptance. The further research also has to look on alternative farrowing pens, flavored feed and use of enrichment to decrease the stress of the weaning process.

© Prairie Swine Centre

• Home
• Jobs
• About
• Research
• Training
• Publications
• Contacts