Effects of former acquaintance on aggression, lesion and growth performance in weaned piglets after mixing

Abstract

Excessive aggression between weaned piglets after mixing is a welfare and production issue resulting in stress, injuries and economic losses. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of former acquaintance (FA) on aggression, lesion and growth performance in weaned, mixed piglets. The results showed that the FA group significantly reduced the number of fights, time spent fighting, number of bullying events, lesions, the average injury scores of the front site and middle site of weaned piglets after mixing. A significant interaction was found between the effects of sex and treatment on the number of fights won and bullying events, between the effects of days post-weaning and treatment on the lesion scores as well as between the effect of the lesion sites and treatments on the lesion score for all three days after mixing. The results suggested a potential welfare advantage to allow litters to have some acquaintance before weaning.

Effects of Feed Restriction and Fermented Potato Protein Supplementation on IGF1, GHR and Kiss1 mRNA Expression in Intact Nursery Gilts

“…These stressors lead to a reduced growth performance, feed intake reduction, maldigestion and absorption (Lallès et al, 2004) which can result in economic losses. Many corrective measures, such as raising management (Mei and Gan 2018), nutritional management and feed supplementation (Namted et al, 2020) were studied. Previous studies on fermented potato protein (FPP) supplementation in suckling pigs were showed to increase serum IGF-1 level (Poltep et al, 2016), decrease mortality rate at 24 h of age (Kummer et al, 2015) and increase IGF1 expression in peripheral white blood cell (Poltep et al, 2016).…”