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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:
Trichenellosis: old facts and new developments
Posted in: Environment by admin on January 1, 2002 | No Comments
Ammonia volatilization from field-applied animal slurrya
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The performance of growing-finishing pigs fed diets with reduced crude protein
Posted in: Prairie Swine Centre by admin on | No Comments
Successful formulation of low protein diets increases our flexibility in formulating practical diets, providing us with another tool to lower nitrogen output in the slurry and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This experiment compared the performance of pigs fed regular protein versus low protein diets. An intermediate protein diet was also employed. Average daily gain, average daily feed intake and feed efficiency were unaffected by dietary treatment. Most carcass characteristics, including index, lean yield and backfat thickness were unaffected by treatment; however, loin muscle thickness was increased on the low protein diet. Lower crude protein diets can be fed successfully without negatively impacting performance or carcass quality.
Social discrimination in lambs: persistence and scope.
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In natural rearing conditions, the social environment of lambs includes the mother, age-mates and other members of the flock. Lambs rapidly develop the ability to discriminate between individual conspecifics or members of different social categories. In the present study recognition among familiar unrelated lambs was assessed in a series of tests. At first, the lambs and their mothers were housed together in small groups for 1 week (Original groups; O). After that they were reorganized into new groupings (Recent-groups; R) for the remainder of the experiment. During test series 1, lambs that were paired with a familiar O-group partner, from which they had been separated for 5 days emitted fewer distress bleats than did those tested with an unfamiliar partner. Two days after this test, when the lambs were given a choice between an O- versus a R-partner, lambs did not display a preference for either of the stimulus lambs. However, in an additional two-choice test the subject lambs responded discriminatively to a recent familiar partner that was simultaneously present with an unfamiliar lamb. In summary results of this study suggest that lambs are capable of developing discriminative relationships with age-mates from different sub-groups, and that such social discrimination persists over a separation period lasting at least several days.
A method of using sustainability indicators to compare conventional and animal-friendly egg production systems
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This paper describes a technique that determines how different egg production systems contribute to the sustainable development of egg production. For demonstration purposes data collected from the Netherlands was used to compare a conventional battery cage system to deep litter and aviary systems, which are considered to be more animal friendly. The method was based on three criteria, the first being the identification of important issues pertaining to sustainable development. The next step was to translate these issues into indicators and finally assess how the indicators contribute to sustainable development. The first two criteria were based upon the findings from literature and consultations with experts in this field. The final criterion is based upon analysis of data and numerical and graphical comparisons. A graphical comparison illustrated how far from the target value each system was for each sustainability indicator. Numerical comparisons combined all the deviations for the sustainability indictors to provide an overall score, which demonstrated the overall contribution that a system made to the sustainability of egg production. The sustainability indicators used were economic performance, ammonia emission, energy use, hen and farmer welfare, and egg quality. All the indicators were considered equally important. Overall, battery cages appeared to be the most sustainable of the three systems. Of the two animal-friendly systems, the aviary was more sustainable than the deep-litter system. To improve upon the sustainability, the aviary system needs to improve the farmer welfare and the economic performance. However, these are only temporary conclusions as the effect of weighting the importance of each sustainability indicator needs to be investigated further.
Formation and dissolution of the mare-foal bond
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This study examined the behaviour of mares during foaling and when they were separated from their foal on a weekly basis. The mares behaviour towards the foal and the fetal membranes were observed during the first 30 minutes after foaling. Half of the mares were than observed from the 30 to 60 minute after foaling. The majority of the contact with the fetal membranes was made during the first 10 minutes after foaling. On average there were 16 contacts made with the fetal membranes and 18 directed towards the foal. During the 30 to 60 minute period after foaling, the mare continued to lick and touch the foal. Only one foal suckled during the first 30 minutes after birth, but one hour after foaling half of the foals had suckled. To test the behaviour of mares during brief separation from their foals, ten mares were separated from the foal for five minutes every week for 9 weeks. The amount that the mare neighed and stepped decreased, as the foal grew older. The foals response rose from weeks 1 to 2 and than decreased after that. This suggests that the bond between the foal and the mare is not complete until the foal is two weeks old.
Eye white may indicate emotional state on a frustration-contentedness axis in dairy cows.
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Research on welfare indicators has focused primarily on indicators of poor welfare, but there is also a need for indicators that can cover the range from good to poor welfare. The aim of this experiment was to compare behaviour elements in dairy cows shown in response to a frustrating situation as well as elements shown as a response to pleasant, desirable stimuli, and in particular measure the visible percentage of white in the eyes. The subjects of the study were 24 randomly selected dairy cows, 12 in each group, all Norwegian Red Cattle. In a 6 min test of hungry cows, access to food and food deprivation were used as positive and frustrating situations, respectively. The cows of the positive stimulus group were fed normally from a rectangular wooden box. When the deprived animals were introduced to the stimulus, the box had a top of Plexiglas with holes so that the cows could both see and smell the food, but were unable to reach it. All cows were habituated to the box before the experiment started. All food-deprived cows showed at least one of these behaviours: aggressiveness (the most frequent), stereotypies, vocalization, and head shaking, while these behaviour patterns were never observed among cows given food. The percentage of white of the total visible eye area was larger than normal in the feed-deprived cows, gradually increasing until 4 min after test starts, while it was consistently lower than normal in the cows that were fed. The percentage of white correlated positively with the number of aggressive buts in deprived cows. The results suggest that the eye white may be a dynamic indicator of emotions in dairy cattle on a frustration-contentedness axis.
An Experimental Infection to Investigate the Indirect Transmission of Classical Swine Fever Virus by Excretions of Infected Pigs
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In this experiment transmission of classical swine fever (CSF)virus via excretions of infected pigs was investigated under experimental conditions. Five pairs of pigs were experimentally infected with CSF virus. Eight days after experimental infection, when all pigs were viraemic for at least 3 days, the pens were depopulated and 20 h later, restocked with five pairs of susceptible pigs which stayed in these pens for 35 days. During the first 3 weeks of the experiment, the pens were neither cleaned nor disinfected. During the observation period, none of the susceptible pigs became infected. This result indicates that CSF virus spread via excretions is of minor importance in the early stages of infection. For extrapolation of these findings to the field situation and to increase the validity of the conclusions further research is needed to evaluate the effect of factors like virus strain, interval, . . ., that may influence the outcome of the experiment.