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: 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 […]