Sow mortality in Canadian Swine Herds
Sow mortality is an area of increasing concern as production records indicate a significant increase in spontaneous death losses over the past 10-20 years. This project gathered information on sow mortality in Canadian herds through a literature review, a producer...
Effective piglet enrichment: effects on development and reduction of damaging behaviours
Tail biting is a behavioural problem that impacts pig welfare and the economics of pork production. Environmental enrichment can reduce damaging behaviours, but practical information on enrichments for young pigs is lacking. The project contained two studies to evaluate enrichment...
Investigating novel biomarkers of welfare in swine
Biomarkers are objective and quantifiable characteristics of biological processes. There are many measures taken to evaluate acute experiences that influence animal welfare, such as measurement of cortisol, a hormone that increases in acute stress after aggression. There is currently a...
Evaluating the impact of early life management of piglets on lifetime welfare and performance
The first 12 weeks of a pig’s life is a critical period of development, and what a pig experiences during this period of time will shape how an individual responds to subsequent life events, leading to consequences for the overall...
A new method for improving animal welfare oversight: routine monitoring of pig carcasses
Animal care verification requires the accurate evaluation and quantification of animal welfare. Assurance schemes typically rely on farm audits for animal care verification, which are time consuming, incur cost for the producer and can pose a biosecurity risk. One approach...
Can slat-compatible enrichment influence the behaviour and response of pigs to a disease challenge?
Rearing pigs in highly enriched environments with a greater space allowance and provision of substrates (straw, mushroom compost, sawdust, wood branches) for rooting and chewing has been found to reduce the disease susceptibility of pigs to co-infection with PRRSV and...
Play behaviour and its role to enhance pig welfare and production
This project is funded by the NSERC Industrial Research Chair program, a five-year research program focusing on emerging questions in swine welfare. Goal 2 will investigate whether play can be used as a tool to support positive welfare and beneficial...
Effects of long distance transport on early-weaned pigs
While transporting weaner pigs is a common practice in swine production, there is very little published research on how this process impacts piglet health and welfare. To address this gap, Dr. Jennifer Brown and colleagues at the University of Guelph...
Enrich your pigs, enrich your profits
Enriching a sow’s environment is easy, inexpensive and offers a range of benefits. This was made clear by the project “From Innovation to Adoption: On-farm demonstration of Swine Research”, which was led by Ken Engele at Prairie Swine Centre and...
Forward facing animal welfare research drives innovation
The NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Swine Welfare is a five-year research program based at the University of Saskatchewan focusing on emerging questions in swine welfare. Led by Dr. Yolande Seddon and developed in collaboration with 14 industry partners representing...
Infrared technologies for identification of market pigs at risk during transport
Digital infrared thermography (DT) is a non-invasive imaging technique that could be a valuable instrument for producers and packaging plants to identify compromised and diseased animals for isolation and treatment, as well as to implement management practices to reduce the...
Effects of long distance transport in the health and welfare of early weaned pigs
The Canadian swine industry relies heavily on the transport of weaned pigs. Recently, the maximum acceptable transport time for pigs in Canada has been decreased from 36 to 28 hours. Weaning is a stressful period for pigs and pigs are...
