Page 6 of articles about behaviour-welfare in Articles

The aggressions can provoke lesions and exclusion from feed for the weaker animals.

Test your knowledge on the European legislation about the minimum standards for the protection of pigs (2001/88/EC of 23/Oct/2001 and 2001/93/EC of 9/Nov/2001)

Space/comfort, after feeding and nourishment, is without doubt a limiting factor for the establishment of a quick, and above all, solid hierarchy.

For the animals to be comfortable it is important to know their needs. The more needs that we can fulfill the more productive the animal will be.

With this article we begin the publication of a series of three unpublished articles by José Barceló for pig333.com on the age at weaning. José gave us the articles a few days before his death. As a way of paying homage to him we have decided to publish them posthumously without any alterations.

Piglets are born with very limited energy reserves: compared to other newborn mammals, they have much less energy stored per kg liveweight.

Tail biting is a typical non-specific reaction to a deterioration of the environmental conditions.

Pigs have a panoramic vision of 310º and binocular vision of 35-50º (Fig. 1). This means that compared to humans, pigs prioritise their lateral monocular vision and this increases their panoramic vision (greater capacity for detecting possible danger, food, other pigs, etc) and decreases their bifocal vision (greater difficulty for calculating distances).

Pigs must have permanent access to a sufficient quantity of material to enable proper investigation and manipulation activities, such as straw, hay, wood, sawdust, mushroom compost, peat ...

The purpose of a ventilation system is to remove excessive moisture and heat produced by animals in order to maintain an indoor climate within certain limits

This article explains the most important principles of environmental control in the pig barns, such as ventilation control, maintenance of temperature within the thermoneutral zone of the animals and of the relative humidity levels inside the barns.