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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:
Assessment of equine temperament by a questionnaire survey to caretakers and evaluation of its reliability by simultaneous behaviour test.
Posted in: Welfare by admin on January 1, 2003 | No Comments
In this study, a questionnaire was given to the caretakers of 86 riding horses to assess their impressions of the horses’ temperaments. Based on the temperament scores three factors were named to describe the data: ‘anxiety’, ‘novelty seeking’ and ‘understanding’. The same horses were subjected to a balloon reactivity test. Each horse was placed in a novel arena where its reaction to two balloons that were suspended from the ceiling and rotated was recorded. The horse’s behaviour and heart rate were recorded for the 5-minute test period. When the results of the questionnaire and the results of the reactivity test were compared, it was found that the horses that were labelled as anxious by the caretakers also had higher heart rates and defecated more during the test. Horses that were assessed as having problems with ordinary care and/or training also had increased heart rate and defecation during the balloon test. The temperament determined based on the questionnaire was highly consistent with the results of the balloon reactivity test. Based on these results, it appears that the temperament of the horse could accurately be assessed using a questionnaire survey.
Recognition of people by dairy calves using colour of clothing.
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The objective of this study was to determine whether dairy calves can discriminate among people based on the colour of their clothing. For six days a week, a familiar rewarder, who always wore the same coloured clothing, fed, patted and spoke gently to the calves while they were in their individual pen. The calves were then tested in a Y-maze, and had to make a choice: if they went to the familiar person, they received a milk reward. The calves did not receive anything, when they did not make the correct choice. The calves were tested eight times. Four experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, the familiar rewarder was in one arm of the maze (which was randomized), but the other arm was empty. Eleven of the 14 calves tested successfully completed the test. In the second experiment, a new group of calves were tested to determine if they could successfully discriminate between the familiar rewarder (wearing same clothes as during the familiarization period) and a stranger (wearing different coloured clothes). All calves successfully completed this test. The third experiment tested whether calves could discriminate between the rewarder and non-rewarder when they were both wearing clothes of the same colour. None of the calves were successful during this test. In the fourth experiment, the rewarder and non-rewarder wore clothes of the same colour, but they were a different colour than what was worn during the familiarization period. Only one calf was successful. The results indicate that colour cues are used by young calves to distinguish between people. The Y-maze is a useful method to use when studying the discriminatory abilities of calves.
THE PIG FARM MANAGER FOR MODELLING PIG PRODUCTION SYSTEMS
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Everything Old Is New Again – Sow Housing
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Danish pig production has increased considerably since Denmark became a member of the European Community in 1972. As of 2000 about 85% was exported to over 100 countries. Recently the European Union made group-housing systems for gestating sows mandatory. The Danish act on sow housing includes group housing from four weeks after service until seven days before farrowing, specific space requirements, solid floors, and a cooling system. Simple group housing systems are relatively cheap but offer little control over sows feed intake, lower the live born pigs, and some sows lose body condition and must be removed. Electric sow feeding systems (ESF) allow sows to be individually fed while residing in groups. Early trials churned out negative results, some including increased risk of abortion, loss of embryos, and higher mastitis incidence in gilts. A high transition period plagued the industry with a 1 to 1.5 year adjustment of herd and management to group housing (which can lead to reduced productivity and an increased cull rate). The Danish Applied Pig Research Scheme (DAPR) developed a set of recommendations for ESF: pen design should have a separate eating and dunging area, lying area should accommodate all sows comfortably, straw must be provided in the lying area, must have 1.1 to 1.3 m2 per sow, and more. They all help to minimize productivity loss when adapting to the ESF. Free access stalls are low tech and becoming popular. They are more expensive because one stall is required for each individual but it provides individual control over feed intake.
Estimating Genetic Merit
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In estimating the genetic merit of an animal, breeders are trying to determine the animal’s value as a parent, its breeding value. The phenotype of an animal (the traits we see and measure) is a combination of genetic and environmental effects. Genetic effects are the result of the genes inherited from parents. Environmental effects are the result of conditions the animal experienced, such as level of nutrition, stocking density, temperature, or health status.
The challenge to the breeder is to determine how much of an animal’s superiority (or inferiority) for a trait is due to additive genetic effects, since this is what will be passed on to its progeny through its own genes. Defining what constitutes genetic merit is an important first step in this process. This will be discussed further in NSIF-FS9, “Multiple Trait Selection for Pork Improvement,” but genetic merit can be defined as how an animal ranks, relative to other selection candidates, for its ability to produce superior offspring.
Favorable performance for a characteristic is an obvious way to rank animals; however, it should be done relative to other animals that are of similar age and housed and raised under similar conditions. It is best to compare an animal’s performance record to the average of the group of animals that they were raised with. This can be done by calculating performance deviations from the group average or the ratio of animal’s performance with the group average. For example, a gilt has an average daily gain of 1.9 lb/day for the grow-finish period while the other gilts of similar age and raised in the same building averaged 1.8 lb/day for average daily gain. The gilt in question would have a performance deviation of 0.1 lb/day, which is favorable and a ratio of 105.6 (1.9/1.8). This is the first step in evaluating an animal’s genetic merit for performance characteristics. For further examples see Table 1.
Two terms are often used in discussing genetic merit. The first term, Estimated Breeding Value (EBV) is the estimated genetic merit of animal, expressed as a deviation. The second term, Expected Progeny Difference (EPD) is one-half an animal’s Estimated Breeding Value and can be used to determine the expected performance change of progeny if the animal in question is used as a parent. Methods to estimate genetic merit in swine have evolved considerably this century. As breeders have been able to incorporate increasing amounts of information to assess an animal’s breeding value, methods have grown from simple visual appraisal to complex statistical techniques. The purpose of this fact sheet is to discuss these alternative methods.
Structure of the Global Markets for Meat
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Dietary Effects on the Compostion of Pig Slurry and on the Plant Urilization of Pig Slurry Nitrogen
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The composition of animal manure is influenced by the diet fed. Efforts are made to decrease nitrogen emission from pig production by optimizing diet composition. This normally results in a lower proportion of N excreted in urine relative to faeces, and may also influence the turnover and utilization of manure N after field application. The effects of pig feed composition on the excretion of urinary and faecal N, on the dynamics of manure N in soil and on the potential utilization of manure N in the field was studied. Growing pigs and sows were fed 12 different diets with variable contents of fibre and protein (with or without synthetic amino acids). Slurries consisting of a mixture of faeces and urine were stored according to common agricultural practice in Northern Europe. The plant availability of N in the resultant slurries originating from animals fed known diets was tested in small field plots with barley, under conditions with minimal N losses. Separate plots were fertilized with increasing amounts of mineral N. Nitrogen uptake in barley was determined and the utilization of slurry N was compared with that of mineral fertilizer N. The net release of mineral N and C from the slurries in soil was also measured in a parallel incubation study. The mineral fertilizer equivalent of pig slurry N was 72-100% and significantly influenced by feed fibre composition, but not significantly influenced by the protein content. There was a significant positive correlation between enzyme-digestible organic matter in the pig diet (measurement used for feed evaluation) and the plant availability of pig slurry N (R2 = 0.90). The ammonium content of stored pig slurry could not be used.
for prediction of the N availability since the net mineralization of pig slurry N was variable, but there was a significant negative correlation between the pig slurry C/N ratio and the plant availability of slurry N (R2 = 0.86). Increased dietary concentration of fermentable structural carbohydrates (e.g. by including sugar beet pulp in the diet) reduces the excretion of N in urine without affecting the availability of slurry total N, whereas an increased concentration of dietary fibre with a low fermentability (straw) results in less urinary N, but also a lower plant availability of slurry N.
Tips for Reducing Odor
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Odor can be minimized with various management techniques. Minimizing the manure storage surface area, covering manure storage facilities, reducing dust and feed wastage inside buildings, increasing air exchange, filtering odorous air, modifying diets, utilizing pit additives and incorporating manure during land application all help minimize odours.
Over 60% of Iowa producers utilize a “100% containment of manure” system, which greatly reduce odours by storing manure below the buildings in concrete structures. Some final methods of reducing odours include limiting agitation time, limiting the pump outs per year, applying a manure management plan, reducing water and feed losses.