Swine Resources - Management

March 2015

This is the first study indicating a link between brain neurotransmission and tail biting behavior in pigs.

April 2015

It appears that nest-building behaviour in prepartum sows could be enhanced by the provision of nesting materials. This, coupled with elevated oxytocin and prolactin concentrations, could result in improved postpartum nursing performance and maternal behaviour in early lactating sows.

April 2015

Under the conditions of this study, plasma transfer alone does not improve survival of low-birth-weight piglets.

April 2015

Overall, video imaging of fattening pigs appeared promising for real-time weight and growth monitoring. In this study the weight could be estimated with an accuracy of 97.5% in a group level.

May 2015

These baseline results suggest that oral-fluid samples can be collected from individually housed sows, but that further studies on the optimization of oral-fluid collection in the sow unit (gestation and farrowing) would be of value.

May 2015

Results of the present study revealed that behavioural patterns that are established when suckling reappear when forced to form a new dominance hierarchy after weaning.

July 2015

Our results suggest that at least at the chosen stocking densities, parity and space allocation have minimal effect on a number of commonly-used welfare measures.

July 2015

The results showed that organic iron complex did not improve the reproductive performance of sows or the growth performance of piglets.

September 2015
C.M.C. van der Peet-Schwering, S.E. van Nieuwamerongen, J.E. Bolhuis, L.M.P. Troquet, A. Hoofs en N.M. Soede
Multi-litter housing: development of piglets and growing and finishing pigs.
Wageningen UR Livestock Research Rapport 880. Published on June 22, 2015.

Pre-weaning mortality (especially crushing by the sow) is higher in piglets raised in a multi-litter (ML) system until 9 weeks of age than in piglets raised in a single-litter (SL) system.

September 2015

The aims of this study were to evaluate the ability of computed tomography, predict the chemical composition of live pigs and carcasses, compare the chemical composition of four different sex types at a commercial slaughter weight and model and evaluate the chemical component growth of these sex types.