Considerations for Large Group Housing of Finishing Pigs

Posted in: Prairie Swine Centre by admin on January 1, 2004 | No Comments

The objectives of large group housing (LGH) are reduce labour, increase pigs marketed in the ideal weight range, reduce overall production costs, and enhance animal welfare. The most typical system is a fully slatted floor. Positives in regard to facilities include pigs having greater selection of a comfort zone; avoid aggression, better observation, and more. Negatives include lack of knowledge in airflow and dunging patterns. Water may need to be added to certain areas to improve the flow in the pits and ammonia could be a problem with fully slatted floors. Positives in regard to equipment include less penning, reduced feed system costs, reduced water system delivery cost and maintenance, reduced cost of ventilation equipment. Negatives include the addition of more equipment requiring more maintenance. Event sort is the sorting of a large group at one time for one event, while continuous sort will sort pigs based on weight on a continuous basis. Equipment used in sorting includes a return gate, feeder, sorter (needs to be strong, dependable, easy to operate and clean, provide protection, and must be placed well), and drinkers. Positives for building cost include less pen partitions, less unusable floor space associated with dividers, reduced cost of floor space as alleys, and more. Negatives include construction costs of $25-30 more per pig space for fully slatted over partially slatted design and the cost of an automatic sorter. Positives for labour include reduced time spent manually sorting and weighing, reduced time to check feeders and drinkers, reduced washing time, and more. Negatives include maintenance with the pigs in the pen, pig swarms, working with individual pigs, removing dead pigs, and more. Positives for operating costs include weighing, sorting, washing, reduced wash water volume, feed restriction, reduced maintenance, and more. Negatives include possible maintenance increase if sorter is faulty. Performance is increased when more pigs can hit the core grid target due to the auto sort. Positives for health status include fewer partitions for disease to hide, less fighting due to more space, and a hospital pen. Negatives include increased risk of disease spreading, vaccination is more difficult, daily health check needs to be more intense, and more. Animal welfare advantages include less aggression/fighting and it looks good in the eyes of the public. Injured animals may be more difficult to find though. Pork quality is increased due to less stress and easier management.

Distributional Impacts of Country-of-Origin Labeling in the U.S. Meat Industry

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Concerns about the negative effect of U.S. meat and livestock imports on domestic livestock prices have increased interest in country of origin labelling (COOL) legislation. An equilibrium displacement model is used to estimate short-run and long-run changes in equilibrium prices and quantities of meat and livestock in the beef, pork, and poultry sectors resulting from the implementation of COOL. Retail beef and pork demand would have to experience a one-time, permanent increase of 4.05% and 4.45%, respectively, so that feeder cattle and hog producers do not lose producer surplus over a 10-year period.

Vocalisation of domestic pigs (Sus scrofa domestica) as an indicator for their adaptation towards ambient temperatures.

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Vocal communication is known to be an important part of communication in both wild and domestic pigs. Calls encode information about the emotional state of an animal and may reflect its need for social and non-social resources. Recently, analysing the vocalisation of farm animals has become an increasingly important tool for evaluating animal welfare. The objective of this study was to test whether the vocalisation of fattening pigs can be used to assess their adaptability to ambient temperatures. The pigs were kept in conditions comparable to those of commercial housing and were exposed to high and low temperatures for several days. The pigs were observed at body weights of 25-35, 50-70 and > 80kg. Vocalisations were recorded during 23.00 to 5.00 h and analysed using an artificial neural network. The results indicate with decreasing temperatures, huddling of pigs to be increased. The increase of huddling was also accompanied by an increase in high-vocalisation. Pigs produce more high-frequent vocalisation and huddled less with increasing weight. The findings of this study suggest that huddling results in a state of discomfort in at least medium and heavy pigs and this is reflected by changes in vocal behaviour. Smaller pigs seem to be less affected by huddling than heavy pigs. In this study, high frequency vocalisation that was produced in situations of disturbed lying behaviour proved to be a powerful indicator for thermoregulatory reactions to low ambient temperatures in medium-weight and heavy pigs. This opens up the possibility to use high-frequency vocalisation for an automatic acoustic monitoring of the behavioural adaptation of fattening pigs towards cold. The use of acoustic monitoring will potentially help animal caretakers to optimize the environmental control.

Endotoxin stress responses in chickens from different genetic lines. 1. Sickness, behavioural, and physical responses

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The study examined the variation in the response to the endotoxin lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in commercial Dekalb chicks or those that were bred for high (HGPS) or low (LGPS) group productivity and survivability (in response to cannibalism and flightiness). Six-week-old chicks housed in colony cages were randomly assigned to either the experimental or the control treatments. The experimental group received an intravenous injection of Escherichia coli LPS (5 mg/kg of body weight), while the control were injected with distilled saline. Clinical symptoms of infection were monitored on 6, 12, 24, 48 and 72 hours after the injection. All the chicks that were injected with LPS exhibited clinical signs of illness. However, the extent of the reaction was genotypically and phenotypically specific. The HGPS chicks underwent brief, but severe behavioural and physical changes, when compared to the Dekalb and LGPS chicks. The body weight gain, organ development and core temperature were most significant in LGPS, lowest in HGPS, while the Dekalb were between the two extremes. The varying responses to the LPS challenges of chicks that underwent different genetic selection indicate that each line adapts differently to stress and their resistance to infection and inflammation. Therefore, when studying the impact that environmental-genetic interactions have on the behaviour and physiology and the subsequent response to stress and disease, the genetic lineage of the chicken needs to be taken into account.

Duration of cold stress modulates overall immunity of chicken lines divergently selected for antibody response

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The effect that the duration of cold stress in reference to how long after the chickens were immunized was studied in three lines of chickens. Two of the lines were bred for either high or low antibody responses and the control was a random-breed line. The chicks were restricted fed at 80% of ad libitum intake levels. Chicks that were 26 days old were exposed to 10ºC temperatures for 0, 2 or 7 days. The chicks were immunized with keyhole limpet homocyanin (KLH) –1, +1, +3, +5 or +7 days following the cold stress. The cellular immunity of the chicks was measured by in vitro lymphocyte proliferation in response to concanavalin A (conA) and KLH. Phagocytosis was measured also measured. The exposure to cold stress negatively affected the body weight gain of the chickens. Exposure to cold stress for seven days significantly enhanced cellular immunity to conA. However, exposure to cold stress for two days had a varying effect on the lymphocyte proliferation in response to conA and was dependent on the chickens’ genetics and the timing of the immunization. The lymphocyte proliferation in response to KLH was enhanced in hens that underwent two days of cold stress 28 days after they were immunized. Cold stress did not affect the antibody response to KLH, but it delayed the mitogen response to conA. The high antibody line of chickens had a higher response to KLH than the other lines. The lymphocyte response to conA was lower in chickens bred to have lower antibody responses. The response of the immune system (phagocytosis) to cold stress was immediate. However, this response was quite variable and the response was not affected by whether they were chickens bred to have high or low antibody responses. When the chickens underwent cold stress for a longer amount of time, the cellular adaptive response, and the humoral immune response were affected to a small degree. There was not an interaction between genetic lines and treatments, which suggests that the genetics that affected the degree of the specific immune response. Overall, when a chicken is feed-restricted and undergoes stress at the same time, their cellular immunity is more sensitive than their humoral immunity. As well, the negative correlation between body weight gains and cellular immunity implies that by enhancing one trait results in the impairment of the other.

Accompanying pre-weaned Thoroughbred foals while separated from the mare during covering reduces behavioural signs of distress exhibited

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During breeding (covering) on some Thoroughbred farms the mare id taken from the box stall in which it is kept with its foal to be serviced by the stallion. The foal is left behind in the stall and often behaves in a manner that would indicate stress and that could result in injury. In this study involving 57 foals, approximately half were accompanied by a handler in their box stall while the mare was absent. The handler stood in the stall and only interacted with the foal if it approached and initiated contact. The non-accompanied foals were left alone in their stalls and observed from outside. Accompanied foals vocalized less and spent less time pawing than did the nonaccompanied foals. Approximately half of the nonaccompanied foals also hurled themselves against the stall wall while non of the accompanied foals did so. The presence of a human in the pen during the mare’s absence reduced the stressfulness of the situation and potentially harmful behaviour.

End-of-cycle bone quality in white and brown-egg laying hens.

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Depletion of bone calcium during the laying cycle results in weakened bones at end-of-lay. The danger of bone breakage in the cage or during handling at disposal is a welfare problem. In this study two strains of hens, one brown (Shaver 579) and one white-egg (Shaver 2000), were studied at the end of lay. The white-egg strain had produced more eggs during the cycle than the brown-egg strain, but the brown-egg strain produced larger eggs with more shell material. The brown-egg strain was slightly heavier at the end-of-lay as well. Bone density of the femur did not differ between strains, but all measures for the humerus and all remaining measures for the femur indicated that the bones of the brown-egg strain were stronger at the end-of-lay. Bone breaking strengths were approximately 20% greater for the brown-egg line. Of the two lines tested, the brown-egg line had better bone quality at the end-of-lay and would be less susceptible to breakage and poor welfare. However, it should be recognized that only one line of each egg type was studied and it cannot be determined if these differences are due to egg-type or unique to the strains studied.

Previous handling and gentle interactions affect behaviour and heart rate of dairy cows during a veterinary procedure.

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Animals often display behavioural and physiological stress responses during routine veterinary and management procedures. These responses can be dangerous to the animals and humans and might lower welfare and performance. The effects of previous positive handling and of gentle interactions during rectal palpation and a sham insemination on the behaviour and heart rate of dairy cows were investigated. Two groups of 10 cows each were studied. One group received positive handling for four weeks in addition to routine handling by one handler. The second group only received routine handling by different caretakers. Following the handling period, each cow received a rectal palpation on four days under four different situations: cow is alone, with the handler, with a usual caretaker, or with an unknown person. Lower heart rates, less kicking, and the tendency for less restless behaviour were found among cows that had experienced the positive handling. Gentle interactions during the test also calmed the cows. However, the person involved in the gentle interactions caused different reactions. Gentling by the handler resulted in less restless behaviour, compared to gentling by the other two people. The authors concluded that previous positive handling and gentle interactions by the positive handler during stressful procedures, causes a reduction in stress reactions. The person involved in interactions makes a difference in the calming effect on the animals. These results show the importance of positive interactions with animals, as they improve welfare and decrease the risk of dangerous responses by the animals during stressful procedures.

Genotypic Prevalence of the Adhesin Involved in Diffuse Adherence in Escherichia coli Isolates in Pre-weaned Pigs with Diarrhoea in Korea

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Driving Costs Out of the Production System

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As recent history of the U.S. swine industry has evidenced, survival in today’s uncertain economic times depends upon a pig production business having either (1) marketing agreements that provide complete price protection against prolonged declines in both carcass and meat prices or (2) competitively low costs of production along with a marketing agreement that at least dampens declines in market prices. These proceedings offer one view on how cost management can be addressed in a contemporary pork production operation. Our ideas are offered as one approach for how costs can be managed. We do not believe that our method is the only, let alone the best, approach for managing costs. There are, no doubt, numerous approaches being used across the industry today to lower costs, as we all struggle to identify ways of surviving. Our approach has worked in one company, New Fashion Pork, Inc., dropping its costs by nearly $3.00/CWT liveweight over the last 3 years or so; so we know it works. Perhaps, there is something in our approach that will work for you.

Cost management occurs at two levels. The first level involves the control of the purchase price of inputs. The price of some inputs is established, often for long periods of time into the future, when the business structure is established; for example, whether barns are owned or contracted. The price of other inputs is established through the day-to-day purchasing practices of the company. Input purchasing is typically centralized, with responsibility being seated at the level of senior management or staff officers hired specifically to purchase the inputs used by the farms. The farm staff typically has no influence over the cost of the inputs that their farms consume. The second level of responsibility occurs at the farm level, where farm staff controls how many units of an input are consumed, called “unit use.” Office staff has little influence on the rate of use of inputs, unless they restrict how many units of an input are delivered to a farm. While it may seem intuitive, low production costs not only require that inputs be purchased competitively BUT ALSO that they be used sparingly. Because cost management occurs at two levels, the office and the farm must work in concert to drive out costs: the office working to purchase inputs as cheaply as possible, the farm staff working to use as few inputs as they can. If either group fails in their responsibility, cost creep occurs.