Dimensions of the Modern Pig

Abstract

Abstract. It is important to know the physical dimensions of livestock to properly design confined animal housing facilities as well as feeding and drinking equipment. An engineering standard for the dimensions of livestock and poultry published by ASABE reports swine dimensions that were originally published in 1968. Changes in animal husbandry practices for swine, such as improved and new genetic lines, nutrition and feed form, and improved facility and equipment design, make it necessary to validate or update these dimensions for modern animals. The objective of this study was to evaluate dimension data for the grow-finish stages of modern pigs. A total of 150 growing-finishing pigs were sampled at five approximate ages: 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20 weeks old (30 animals at each age). The animals equally represented three commercial sire lines (Landrace, Duroc, and Yorkshire), and equal numbers of barrows and gilts were sampled. Dorsal and lateral color digital and depth images were collected using a Kinect sensor as the pigs were held individually in a stanchion or scale, and the images were analyzed by manual and automated methods. Measured physical dimensions included height from top of back to the floor, length from nose to base of the tail, width at shoulders, jowl length, front leg height, body depth from top of back to lowest point of the belly, and others. It was determined that the conformation of modern pigs has changed from the dimensions reported in current engineering standards such that modern pigs tend to be wider (15.1%) and shorter in height (-10.2%) and length (-4.9% on average) between 4 and 20 weeks of age. These updated pig dimensions will enable engineers to better design modern swine equipment and facilities. Keywords: Depth sensor, Dimensions, Image analysis, Precision livestock farming, Swine.

Dimensions of the Suckling Pig

“…The overall shape and relationship of the dimension curves (L, H, W) are similar to those in older literature and recent studies (Figure 2; Table 1; Midwest Plan Service, 1983;ASABE, 2011;Condotta et al, 2018). Notably, this set of dimension data shows that at birth, piglets are smaller in all dimensions.…”

“…; Digital Outside Calipers, Igaging, San Clemente, CA, USA), and BW was measured using a hanging bucket scale (±0.10 kg, 300 kg capacity; W1478, Performance Tools, Tukwila, WA, USA). Depth (i.e., abdomen to top of spine) measurement was not measured as recent research has shown that this measurement does not differ from the width of the piglet at and below 20 kg based on the 95% confidence interval (Condotta et al, 2018).…”

“…Utilizing the upper and lower limits of the confidence interval of piglet dimensions, a sensitivity analysis for surface area and the surface area to BW ratio was performed. Surface area (SA; m 2 ) was calculated by modeling the piglets as ideal cylinders, a typical method to heat transfer modeling, which excludes the ends of the cylinder and utilizes the width and length dimensions (Equation 2, Hoff et al, 1993;Condotta et al, 2018). The surface area to volume ratio was not analyzed in this study as no volume measurements were possible on live piglets.…”

“…Recently Leonard et al (2020) and Mumm et al (2019) documented the static and dynamic space usage of late-gestation sows. Condotta et al (2018) quantified dimensions of growing pigs (4-20 weeks old; 5-227 kg) using machine vision to demonstrate modern pigs tend to be wider (15.1%) and shorter in height (−10.2%) and length (−4.9% on average) compared to ASABE (2011). Other studies have derived allometric relations relating growing pig resting area as a function of body weight (Boon, 1981;Ekkel et al, 2003;Pastorelli et al, 2006).…”

Evaluation of low-cost depth cameras for agricultural applications

“…The images were processed and analyzed using methods proposed by Condotta et al (2018a) and Condotta et al (2018b) to acquire the pig's projected volume (px cm) ( Fig. 6).…”