Animals living in a group generally establish a dominance hierarchy which enables\u00a0the group to function without the necessity of fights whenever group members\u00a0encounter each other (Beilharz and Cox, 1967). A stable dominance hierarchy\u00a0can be maintained by subtle signals and give high-ranking animals priority\u00a0of access to resources in limited availability (Banks et al., 1979). In intensive\u00a0housing systems this can have serious consequences for low-ranking animals\u00a0(Csermely and Wood-Gush, 1990), owing to close proximity of high-ranking sows\u00a0and, in some cases, limitation of resources.<\/p>\n
A restricted feeding regimen is adopted in commercial practice to maintain an\u00a0almost constant body-condition of the sow throughout the reproductive cycle.\u00a0Depending on the manner of distribution of this limited amount of food between\u00a0sows in a group-housing situation, competition can result in unequal distribution\u00a0of food and loss of condition of low-ranking sows (Brouns and Edwards, 1992 ).\u00a0This kind of competition is likely to occur in feeding systems where the food is\u00a0distributed once or twice daily on the floor (floor-feeding) and is aggravated by\u00a0a low feeding level (McBride et al., 1964; Baxter, 1983 ). A \u00a0conventional diet is\u00a0concentrated in nutrients and although it is sufficient for good health and performance,\u00a0it might not fulfil other needs of the sow, since the small amount of\u00a0food is unlikely to give a feeling of satiety (Lawrence et al., 1988 ). Provision of
\na diet ad libitum should, in theory, obviate the need for competition and eliminate\u00a0negative consequences for low-ranking sows.
\nIn this experiment, the consequences of food available, in limited quantities\u00a0once daily or ad libitum, on live weight gain and feeding behaviour of sows of\u00a0different social rank in a group-housing situation, were investigated.<\/p>\n
Sandra Edwards<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Animals living in a group generally establish a dominance hierarchy which enables\u00a0the group to function without the necessity of fights whenever group members\u00a0encounter each other (Beilharz and Cox, 1967). A stable dominance hierarchy\u00a0can be maintained by subtle signals and give high-ranking animals priority\u00a0of access to resources in limited availability (Banks et al., 1979). In intensive\u00a0housing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,928],"tags":[4685,640,3814,26096,46,108,7857,26290,26341,26222],"class_list":["post-15163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pork-insight-articles","category-welfare","tag-access","tag-animal","tag-competitive","tag-edwards","tag-feed","tag-feeding","tag-group-housed-sows","tag-housed-sows","tag-sandra-edw","tag-sandra-edwards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15163"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15166,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15163\/revisions\/15166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}