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Industry Partners
Prairie Swine Centre is an affiliate of the University of Saskatchewan
Prairie Swine Centre is grateful for the assistance of the George Morris Centre in developing the economics portion of Pork Insight.
Financial support for the Enterprise Model Project and Pork Insight has been provided by:
RATE AND FREQUENCY OF UREASE INHIBITOR APPLICATION FOR MINIMIZING AMMONIA EMISSIONS FROM BEEF CATTLE FEEDYARDS
Posted in: Environment by admin on January 1, 2005 | No Comments
Concentrations of additive arsenic in Beijing pig feeds and the residues in pig manure
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One Less Chore for the Producer
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Pre-sorting pigs by weight at the beginning of the growing and finishing stage offers no major advantage to producers, according to results from trials at PSCI. Ethologist Dr. Harold Gonyou oversaw the trials. He says while the conclusions might come as a surprise in terms of current production practices, they make sense based on what we know about pigs’ social behaviour. For the producer, it means one less chore.
“You don’t have to worry about spending time sorting your pigs,” Gonyou says. “It’s not that critical to the productivity of the animal.” This shift in popular wisdom comes from management changes in the last 20 years. Back then, the practice of sorting by weight had merit, as pigs that were three or four weeks apart in age might be grouped together. In addition, pigs weren’t given all the feed they could eat. Under such a system, smaller animals were at a definite disadvantage. Today, groups of pigs are typically only a few days apart in age, producing a very uniform range of weights. They are also demand-fed, so they get all the feed they want. Under this system, social interaction becomes more important. It’s better to keep together pigs that know each other and have an established hierarchy. This reduces fighting and other problem behaviour. Two trials were conducted to answer the questions of whether pigs should be sorted by weight, and whether continuous flow or all in-all out pig flow management should have a bearing on the decision. Pigs were classified as Heavy, Medium and Light before being put into pens. Barrows and gilts were handled separately, as it has been established that each gender has different protein requirements and growth rates. For the uniform pens, pigs from a single weight class were grouped together. For the variable pens, pigs of two or more weight classes were included. Researchers kept track of how fast the pigs were growing, how much they were eating, how aggressive they were, how much time they spent at various activities, and how long it took to bring them up to finished weight. There were no adverse effects from having variable weight pens. Uniform and variable weight pens emptied at the same rate under the continuous flow system (an average of 105.5 days). There was no significant difference in the way the pigs behaved. Under the all in-all out system, sorting appeared to slow down the rate of turnover in the pens. Rooms of variable weight pens emptied nearly six days faster, on average, than the rooms with uniform weight pens (110.9 days for uniform pens versus 104.1 days for variable pens). Gonyou says the results from the PSCI trials are consistent with previous studies he has conducted, and there is growing confidence that sorting by weight is unnecessary. In fact, when pen-emptying rate is factored in under the all in-all out systems favoured today, it makes more sense to randomly assign pigs to pens, within gender.
TAKE HOME MESSAGE
Sorting pigs requires labour, and results in remixing, a practice known to reduce feed intake and gains in growing pigs. The practice is not adding value to a continuous flow barn and may be detrimental to room turnover in all in-all out barns.
Panel Presentation: Water Management: Tips for Saving Water
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Proper water management is essential for production performance. It is important to do a water audit for determining farm-specific water use, ensure proper placement and height of water nipples, check and adjust flow rates, consider cup/bowl drinkers, use wet/dry feeders in grow-finish, avoid high mineral concentrations, and avoid excessive protein. The adoption of wet/dry feeders, water nipple waste reduction, and drinker height/flow can improve net income by $1.05 per pig.
Transportation of Early Weaned Piglets: production and welfare aspects
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The industry is adopting early weaning practices. Along with early weaning comes transportation of the piglets, which adds to the stresses already present. While a piglet is being transported it will spend about 75% of its time resting and about 25% of its time being active. As the time of the trip increases so does the resting time of the piglets. This indicates the piglets are becoming fatigued. However, increasing levels of fighting as transport progresses may show that stress is enough at the start to avoid hierarchy fighting and that they become more comfortable with the transport as it progresses. 80% of the time spent after transportation was spent resting. Drinking frequency is the greatest during the first day after transport, and the frequency increases as the transportation time increases. Piglets who have not reached weaning weight by 7 days post-weaning require individual attention to bring their productivity back up. This may be related to the fact that during transport feed is not available so they do not initiate solid feed consumption. During the heat of summer, the hot truck trailers can increase the time to return to weaning weight (there is an increased number of “poor doers”). Piglets transported above 35°C will be exposed to a large degree of thermal stress. When temperatures are too high, piglets will be unable to show their natural thermoregulatory behaviour (meaning huddling when cold or spreading out when too hot). During the winter, there appears to be more fatigue because piglets will lie down for a higher percentage of the time.
The short-term effects of increasing meal frequency on stereotypic behaviour of stabled horses
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The incidence of stereotypic behaviours was investigated when the number of meals of concentrate was increased (while maintaining the same daily intake). Thirty horses that performed stereotypic behaviour were selected for this study. Their behaviour was recorded during their morning and afternoon concentrate feeds. The stereotypic behaviours were more commonly observed in the afternoon than morning, and appeared to be due to the lower availability of high fibre forage during the afternoon meal. In another component of this study, nine horses were fed their normal ration of concentrate divided between two, four and six equally sized meals. Their behaviour was compared with seven control horses, which received two meals per day. The results indicated that as the number of meals increased, there was a decrease in oral stereotypies, but weaving and nodding increased prior to feeding. The control horses increased weaving, nodding and oral stereotypies as their yard-mates received more meals. Overall, both treatment and control horses showed an increase in the incidence of stereotypies as the number of meals increased. The authors concluded that increasing meal frequency by dividing concentrate ration into a number of smaller meals might decrease oral stereotypies, but pre-feeding stereotypies might persist. Also, stereotypic behaviour may increase in horses receiving a lower frequency of meals, but have visual contact with horses that are receiving more meals per day.