The rise and fall of the farrowing sow : does communication matter?
Master thesis
Permanent lenke
http://hdl.handle.net/11250/278013Utgivelsesdato
2015-02-27Metadata
Vis full innførselSamlinger
- Master's theses (IHA) [318]
Sammendrag
Piglet mortality is both reducing animal welfare and production yield. A large part of the piglet
mortality is due to crushings by the sow, as a direct effect of the sows posture changes. Both
frequencies, duration and other quality measures of the sow’s posture changes (e.g. pre-lying
behavior through communication with piglets) would therefore affect crushings. The purpose
of this study is to investigate if and how the sow-piglet communication and the sows posture
change is affected by different pen types, and if this in turn affects piglet mortality.
In this study 24 healthy Landrace × Yorkshire sows were included, 12 from a traditional pen
and 12 from the UMB-pen (a prototype design-pen), with parities from 1-4 (1.8±0.20). The
sows where recorded on video from prepartum and until 12 hours postpartum. The video
material was analyzed for sow-piglet communication and postural changes.
A significant difference in activity level was found between comparing prepartum, farrowing
and postpartum, with multiparous sows showing more posture changes. A significant difference in activity level was found between comparing prepartum, farrowing
and postpartum, with multiparous sows showing more posture change prepartum than
primiparous sows. There were few significant differences between the pens, with only more
time spend on standing to lying in the UMB-pen than in the traditional pen. The posture
parameter best explaining crushings in the present study was the averages time the sow spent
standing. Crushing could also be explained by an increased frequency of sitting.
Posture changes was also associated with communication. Primiparous sows communicated
more, and more communication were performed in the UMB-pen. Frequency of standing to
lying by the sow was positively correlated with sow-initiated communication, again positively
correlated with crushings. But, when investigating communication effects on overall mortality,
the best parameters to explain that was actually piglet-initiated. Increased communication by
the piglets reduces mortality, which could both be due to reduced amount of crushings with
increased orientation by the sow, or reduced mortality of other causes, e.g. starvation and
hypothermia.