Rearing environment may potentially have an impact on pig’s responses to stress. To determine the effects of rearing environment on pigs, the behavioural and physiological responses to various stressors were compared between female pigs raised in a standard farrowing crate (poor) or in a group of free-ranging sows with her piglets (enriched). When the pigs reached 14-17 weeks-of-age, their behaviour was analyzed in multiple social confrontations (an intruder pig was introduced to a resident’s home pen). When the pigs reached adult age (between 38-45 weeks old) they were behaviours were analyzed when they received an electric shock, presented with a novel object and more resident\/intruder tests. The level of injuries sustained and the changes in salivary cortisol were recorded before and after the resident intruder test. Salivary cortisol samples were also taken before and after the pigs underwent the electric shock test. The results found demonstrable differences in aggressive behaviour between residents and intruders, but this was only seen in pigs raised in the enriched environment. Pigs reared in the poor environment inflicted more lesions on one another in the social encounter tests. These results indicate that raising pigs in a poor environment may negatively impact the development of the pigs’ social skills, which would lead to difficulties in establishing a dominance hierarchy, as seen in this study. The negative effects of a poor rearing environment when the pigs are young lasts into adulthood based on their reactions to electric shock, a novel object and resident\/intruder tests. Therefore, pigs behaviour can be shaped by the rearing environment and those raised in an enriched environment demonstrated more avoidance behaviours, which is useful in social and non-social encounters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rearing environment may potentially have an impact on pig’s responses to stress. To determine the effects of rearing environment on pigs, the behavioural and physiological responses to various stressors were compared between female pigs raised in a standard farrowing crate (poor) or in a group of free-ranging sows with her piglets (enriched). When the pigs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[928],"tags":[8882,10033,2124,1972,12197,27280,5886,103,14804,12480,2771,13370,15647,3465,15459,14,126,89,33,16262,14979,20059,26787,104,96,110,17939,20911,4874,1579,26223],"class_list":["post-296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-welfare","tag-al","tag-arc","tag-behaviourchallengepigsrearingsocial-stress","tag-condition","tag-electric-shock-in-swine","tag-environment","tag-farrow","tag-farrowing","tag-hal","tag-ill-effects-of-rearing-of-pigs","tag-iron","tag-ken","tag-olsson-i-a-s-1999-poor-rearing-conditions-and-social-stress-in-pigs-repeated-social-challenge-and-the-effect-on-behavioural-and-physiological-responses-to-stressors","tag-pea","tag-ped","tag-pig","tag-piglet","tag-piglets","tag-pigs","tag-pl","tag-poor-rearing-conditions-and-social-stress-in-pigs-repeated-social-challenge-and-the-effect-on-behavioural-and-physiological-responses-to-stressors","tag-raising-pigs","tag-rearing-piglets-in-a-poor-environment-developmental-aspects-of-pigs","tag-sow","tag-sows","tag-stress","tag-swine-electric-shock","tag-t","tag-tan","tag-test","tag-the-effects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296","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=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}