Deep-litter, large group housing systems for growing pigs have been developed as an alternative housing system compared to conventional confinement systems. Deep-litter, large group systems are naturally ventilated, have a floor base of deep-litter consisting of rice hulls, straw, corn stalks or other bedding material, accommodate larger group sizes (ranging from 150 to 2000 pigs per pen) and the pigs have a floor space allowance of approximately 1.0m\u00b2 per pig (Morrison et al., 2003a). Conventionally, pigs are housed in more confined systems with fully, or partially slatted floors, a liquid effluent system, group sizes ranging from 5 to 50 pigs with a floor space allowance of approximately 0.7m\u00b2 per pig. Pigs housed in deep-litter, large group systems are up to 10% less efficient in converting feed provided to liveweight gain (feed:gain) and present 1\u20132 mm more backfat at slaughter compared to pigs raised in conventional systems (Morrison et al., 2007; Honeyman and Harmon, 2003). It is speculated that there may be disincentives for pigs in deep-litter, large group systems to visit the feeders regularly. These disincentives may include large distance to travel to the feeders, reduced social facilitation to feed and a reluctance to frequently visit the feeder due to increased opportunity to interact with a large number of pigs away from the feeder (Hsia and Wood-Gush, 1983). The aim of the current experiment was to test the hypothesis that reducing the distance that the pig must travel to feed in a deep-litter, large group system will result in shorter, more frequent feeding bouts, thus improving growth performance (feed intake, growth rate and feed:gain). The experiment studied pigs from 9 to 22 weeks of age, using 720 crossbred pigs. There were two trials conducted, utilising 360 pigs each time. The two treatments were: (A) maximum distance to travel to the feeder (MAX) \u2013 one feeder located on the north end of the pen and (B) minimum distance to travel to feeder (MIN) \u2013 two feeders: one located on the north end of the pen and one at the south end. Feeding behaviour was observed at 14 and 22 weeks of age. It was concluded that reducing the distance that the pig had to travel to the feeder (MIN) did not significantly change the feeding behaviour of pigs in a deep-litter, large group system. Furthermore, there was no impact of treatment on growth performance. These results suggest that the extra distance that pigs have to travel to feed in deep-litter, large group systems is not a disincentive for the pigs to visit the feeder regularly. Other factors may be responsible for the difference in feeding behaviour between pigs in deep-litter systems and conventional housing systems, such as a combination of deep-litter bedding and social contact with pen mates which preoccupies the pig\u2019s time and distracts them from visiting the feeder and feeding frequently. Morrison et al. (2003a, 2007) have shown that pigs in deep-litter, large group housing systems do spend significantly more time interacting with their environment and their pen mates and perform more locomotory behaviours compared to conventionally housed pigs. These studies provide evidence that perhaps pigs in deep-litter, large group systems may not feed frequently because they are distracted by these other factors rather than being inhibited by the actual distance required to travel to feed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Deep-litter, large group housing systems for growing pigs have been developed as an alternative housing system compared to conventional confinement systems. Deep-litter, large group systems are naturally ventilated, have a floor base of deep-litter consisting of rice hulls, straw, corn stalks or other bedding material, accommodate larger group sizes (ranging from 150 to 2000 pigs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[930],"tags":[8882,2096,4262,1582,2854,9628,19644,599,27280,2851,6904,46,925,1293,4178,108,5643,171,5329,20007,109,21766,2788,651,517,158,1374,47,2771,6258,4590,8279,818,1675,10788,10859,15459,63,14,33,15530,1533,803,534,76,51,6259,734,20911,4874,1579,26223,52,6053,24635,1301],"class_list":["post-4121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-production","tag-al","tag-alternative","tag-backfat","tag-bedding","tag-bin","tag-contact","tag-dd","tag-digestibility","tag-environment","tag-fat","tag-fee","tag-feed","tag-feed-intake","tag-feeder","tag-feeders","tag-feeding","tag-feeding-behaviour","tag-floor","tag-floor-space","tag-gh","tag-group-housing","tag-group-housing-systems","tag-group-size","tag-growing-pig","tag-growing-pigs","tag-growth","tag-growth-rate","tag-housing","tag-iron","tag-large-group","tag-large-group-housing","tag-liquid-feed","tag-litter","tag-location","tag-lucta","tag-nat","tag-ped","tag-performance","tag-pig","tag-pigs","tag-pigs-per-pen","tag-size","tag-slatted-floor","tag-slatted-floors","tag-slaughter","tag-space","tag-styles","tag-systems","tag-t","tag-tan","tag-test","tag-the-effects","tag-treatment","tag-use","tag-visiting","tag-weight"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121","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=4121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}