Tag: sows

Abstracts: Effects of free farrowing system on the productive performance and welfare of sows and piglets

Regardless of international animal welfare regulations, most sows in production currently spend most of their lives and the peripartum period in caged housing systems. Although this type of management is intended to reduce neonatal mortality in piglets, several studies consider that there has been no significant reduction in its incidence […]

Abstracts: Discomfort period of fattening pigs and sows stunned with CO2: Duration and potential influencing factors in a commercial setting

Despite raising animal welfare concerns, stunning of pigs with CO2 prior to slaughter remains the most widely applied method in commercial settings. The aim of this study was to assess the discomfort period and its influencing factors in fattening pigs and sows in a commercial slaughterhouse.

Abstracts: The effect of hessian and straw as nesting materials on sow behaviour and piglet survival and growth to weaning

Sows are strongly driven to build a nest prior to farrowing, and the performance of this behaviour is linked to the environment in which the animal is housed. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of two nest-building materials, hessian and straw, on peri-parturient sow behaviour, plasma […]

Survey among Belgian pig producers about the introduction of group housing systems for gestating sows

There is a global move from individual to group housing of gestating sows. In the EU, individual gestating stalls will be banned by 2013. Just like in other industrialised regions, these stalls have been the standard housing system for intensively kept sows from the 1960s onward in the Flemish region […]