Prairie Swine Group Housing Jennifer Brown

Posted in: Pork Insight Articles, Prairie Swine Centre, Production, Swine Innovation by student on July 20, 2018

Speaker: Jennifer Brown, Research Scientist – Ethology

Summary:

Ethology is the field of animal behavior, Dr. Brown’s work tries to understand what motivates a sow, and pigs in general, to do what they do and how to translate this into management practices.

Social Interaction and Aggression in Sows

Previously animal management has occurred in stalls, new management practices will require more husbandry skills. It is evident that there are two main issues that aggression occurs in sows:

1.  Mixing aggression: first 24-48 hours. Fighting occurs to establish their social status.
2.  Ongoing aggression: occurs after social order has been established

Management that can help reduce aggression in sows revolves around familiarity, previous experience, genetics, pen design, feeding, odour, group size/composition, and time of day.

There are four main feeding systems:

1. Floor feeding
2. Shoulder stalls
3. ESF
4. Free-Access Stalls

The style of feeding system will strongly influence the group size. Feeding systems that are competitive work better with a smaller group size, whereas a noncompetitive feeding system allows are larger group size.

Space Allowance:

Space costs money, therefor it is important to determine what the break point is where the sows are experiencing adverse effects.  The Code of Practice outlines recommendations regarding minimum space allowance for both gilts and sows. Smaller groups require larger allowances than larger groups as there is not as much shared space.

Pen design is critical and it is important to consider space allowance, feeders and drinkers (location and ratio), layout and separation of dunging, feeding and resting areas.

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