Abstracts - Management

In the double nursing strategy every week one or more sows nurse two litters simultaneously from birth to weaning.

Co-mingling of unfamiliar piglets before weaning did not improve performance. Co-mingling and intermittent suckling increased positive behaviour after weaning. Intermittent suckling likely advanced gastrointestinal changes in the peri-weaning period.

Tail biting in pigs has been an identified behavioural, welfare and economic problem for decades, and requires appropriate but sometimes difficult on-farm interventions.

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the implications of replacing farrowing crates with an alternative housing system from 3 days postpartum until weaning.

This study assessed the efficacy of two different Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae vaccination programmes in relation to the time of weaning.

Sows can exhibit clear preferences for enrichment type, with the sows interacting with the rope significantly more often throughout the study, at each sampling hour.

Provision of environmental enrichment and herbal compounds may reduce stress in current commercial pig husbandry systems.

Tail docking using either clippers or cautery results in neuroma formation, thus having the potential to affect long-term pig welfare.

The effect of week after weaning had highly significant influences on tail lesions.

In practice, delaying pigs from the normal production flow translates into higher feeding costs, increase number of days to slaughter and increased labour requirements reducing production efficiency for the pig operation.

An effective gilt acclimation program should ideally reduce M. hyopneumoniae shedding at first farrowing. The aim of this study was to identify current acclimation strategies for M. hyopneumoniae in Europe.

The aim of the present study was to investigate how piglets’ use of a creep area is affected by using radiant heat compared to an incandescent light bulb.

Weaning stress accompanied by outburst of aggression is a critical point in pig production as it compromises piglets’ welfare and leads to poor growth rate and health problems. Therefore, a weaning methods to smoothen the lactation–weaning transition are of great importance.

According to the results, the optimal density was 1.2 m2/pig considering welfare and building utilization.

Sow laminitis may frequently occur, causing production of low quality hoof horn.

The batch and the interaction between treatment and batch had highly significant influences on tail losses at the end of rearing.

The reduction in infectious agents in the air by the EPI technology could potentially decrease the microbial exposure for pigs.

PEDV transmission through contaminated PPE occurs rapidly under modeled conditions. Biosecurity procedures are recommended.

The study objective was to characterize body temperature and activity changes in replacement gilts at the onset of estrus in order to provide initial data to develop a remote estrus detection system for commercial swine operations.

The influence of feed structure and pelleting on the development of gastric ulcers in pigs is well established. Some studies have shown a beneficial effect of access to straw on gastric health. However, the role of other factors, e.g. disease and stress, is not well understood.

This work could inform contingency planning that would lead to cost savings in the event of a future FMD outbreak and could also be applied to other infectious diseases.

African swine fever (ASF) is a major pig health problem, and the causative virus is moving closer to Western European regions where pig density is high. Stopping or slowing down the spread of ASF requires mitigation strategies that are both effective and practical.

This study provides the first indication that record keeping through an advisory service may help to lower the risk of tail biting, which is associated with improved farm performance.

Ear tagging causes a dramatic increase in cortisol levels compared with handling alone in piglets, which suggests that this procedure causes substantial distress.