Gestating sows are restricted fed to limit excessive body fat but this results in a sustained level of hunger. Hungry sows remain active and aggression both during feeding and at other times of the day may increase. Hunger is also a cause of stereotypic or pen-directed oral behaviours. This study examined two management methods that could be used to reduce hunger related aggression and pen-directed oral behaviours. The sows were housed in groups of 7 on solid floored pens with ample room (3.7 m2\/sow). Five groups were assigned to each of four treatment combinations, representing a 2 x 2 factorial arrangement. Sows were either bedded with straw or not. They were either fed a high fibre diet (including sugar beet pulp), or equivalent energy in a low fibre diet. Feed was dropped into the pen once a day in such a way that it was widely dispersed throughout the lying area. Sows bedded on straw spent more time standing during the 2 hours after feeding, and had higher levels of aggression compared to those without straw. However, the presence of straw reduced the incidence of pen-directed oral behaviour. Thus, straw was beneficial in terms of pen-directed behaviour, but resulted in greater aggression. High fibre diets did not affect aggression when compared to standard diets, but sows on high-fibre diets were less active several hours after feeding and less involved in pen-directed oral behaviour. Both straw and high-fibre diets appear to reduce pen-directed diets, probably through a decrease in hunger, but straw bedding increased the level of aggression in floor fed sows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gestating sows are restricted fed to limit excessive body fat but this results in a sustained level of hunger. Hungry sows remain active and aggression both during feeding and at other times of the day may increase. Hunger is also a cause of stereotypic or pen-directed oral behaviours. This study examined two management methods that […]<\/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":[88,8882,2136,13816,1582,2854,19644,577,1287,23694,25122,20691,27278,2851,6904,46,108,1344,171,27233,24673,8108,20007,7857,26290,8410,48,10859,3465,15459,22808,16262,104,96,20911,4874,52,6053],"class_list":["post-5003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-welfare","tag-aggression","tag-al","tag-anomalous-behaviourfeeding-and-nutritionpig-housingstrawbeddingbehaviourfloorsowssow","tag-ass","tag-bedding","tag-bin","tag-dd","tag-diet","tag-diets","tag-dir","tag-eet","tag-effects-of-straw-bedding-and-high-fibre-diets-on-the-behaviour-of-floor-fed-group-housed-sows","tag-energy","tag-fat","tag-fee","tag-feed","tag-feeding","tag-fibre","tag-floor","tag-fns-6500","tag-fns-6500-scanning-monochromator","tag-gestating-sow","tag-gh","tag-group-housed-sows","tag-housed-sows","tag-lying-area","tag-management","tag-nat","tag-pea","tag-ped","tag-pic","tag-pl","tag-sow","tag-sows","tag-t","tag-tan","tag-treatment","tag-use"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5003","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=5003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}