Pre-weaning environmental enrichment increases piglets’ object play behaviour on a large scale commercial pig farm

Yang, Chung-Hsuan; Salazar, Laura C.; Llonch, Lourdes; Manteca, Xavier; Camerlink, Irene; Llonch, Pol

doi:10.1016/j.applanim.2018.02.004

Cited by 54 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Enriched housed pigs tended to spend more time on play behavior before weaning and significantly played more after the switch in housing at 7 weeks. Also others reported more play behavior in pigs kept in enriched as compared with barren pens (11,12,16,32,62,63). It has been put forward that several types of play behavior are suppressed in adverse physical and environmental conditions (64) and following severe or prolonged negative emotions (65,66).…”

Section: Effects Of Enrichment Before the Switchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Preweaning consumption of creep feed is known to stimulate post-weaning feed intake and thereby reduces the weaning-related growth check and other problems [e.g., (70)(71)(72)]. The better post-weaning performance of enriched pigs may, apart from resulting from an enhanced development of feeding-related behaviors, also reflect increased adaptability of piglets reared in enriched conditions to stressful processes such as weaning (63,73). However, it has been shown that post-weaning environmental enrichment alone, irrespective of preweaning housing, also improves performance and health of newly weaned piglets (73), which may be mediated by preserving gut functioning [e.g., (74,75)], either through intake of substrates or through stress reduction [e.g., (51,76)].…”

Section: Effects Of Enrichment Before the Switchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of Early and Current Environmental Enrichment on Behavior and Growth in Pigs

et al. 2020

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Enriched environments are known to beneficially affect the behavior of pigs, as compared with barren pens. The influence of enrichment may, however, depend on pigs' early life housing experiences. The aim of this study was to investigate the long-term effects of early and later life environmental enrichment on behavior and growth in pigs with different coping styles. Pigs were housed in either barren pens or in larger pens enriched with rooting substrates from birth, and half of them experienced a housing switch, i.e., a loss or gain of enrichment, at 7 weeks of age, creating four treatment groups. Home pen behavior and body weight were recorded until 19 weeks of age. Pigs were classified as reactive or proactive based on a backtest at 2 weeks of age. Enrichment increased time spent exploring, chewing, and play and decreased oral manipulation of penmates and pen-directed exploring and chewing. Behavior of pigs that switched from barren to enriched pens or vice versa reflected not only their actual environment, but also their early life housing. As early and later life enrichment affected most behaviors in opposite directions, effects of enrichment, or lack thereof, after the switch were more pronounced in pigs that had experienced a different early life condition. For instance, pigs experiencing an upgrade from barren to enriched pens seemed to "catch-up" by showing more exploration and play. Conversely, pigs exposed to a downgrade displayed more oral manipulation of penmates than ones kept barren throughout, which particularly held for pigs with a reactive coping style. Effects of early life and current housing on several other behaviors depended on coping style too. Pigs housed in enriched conditions appeared better able to cope with weaning than barren housed pigs, as they gained more weight and had higher feed intake post-weaning. Barren housed pigs had a lower body weight than enriched pigs just before the switch, after which growth was mainly determined by actual housing, with enriched kept pigs having a higher feed intake and body weight. Thus, not only current housing conditions, but also a (mis)match with the early life environment may affect behavior and growth of pigs.

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Section: Effects Of Enrichment Before the Switchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Effects Of Enrichment Before the Switchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Early and Current Environmental Enrichment on Behavior and Growth in Pigs

et al. 2020

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“…One of the first changes that can be observed in animals that are under stressful conditions is a change in their behavior repertoire. Within behavior, the way animals react to novel situations is also influenced by the environmental conditions in where they live [18]. Therefore, behavior is a sensitive measure to investigate changes of perception of the environment.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prenatal heat stress effects on gestation and postnatal behavior in kid goats

Coloma-García¹,

Mehaba²,

Llonch³

et al. 2020

PLoS ONE

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Consequences of heat stress during pregnancy can affect the normal development of the offspring. In the present experiment, 30 Murciano-Granadina dairy goats (41.8 ± 5.7 kg) were exposed to 2 thermal environments varying in temperature-humidity index (THI) from 12 days before mating to 45 days of gestation. The environmental conditions were: gestation under thermal-neutral (TN; THI = 71 ± 3); and gestation under heat stress (HS; THI = 85± 3) conditions. At 27 ± 4 days old, female kids exposed to in utero TN (IUTN; n = 16) or in utero HS (IUHS; n = 10) were subjected to 2 tests: arena test (AT) and novel object test (NOT), the latter was repeated at 3 months of age. Additionally, 8 months after birth, a subset of IUTH and IUHS growing goats (n = 8 each; 16.8 ± 3.4 kg BW) were exposed to 2 environmental conditions in 2 consecutive periods: a basal thermal-neutral period (THI = 72 ± 3) for 7 days, and a heat-stress period (THI = 87 ± 2) for 21 days. In both periods, feeding, resting, posture, and thermally-associated behaviors were recorded. The gestation length was shortened by 3 days in GHS goats. In the AT, IUHS kids showed a lower number of sniffs (P < 0.01) compared to IUTN. In the NOT, IUHS kids also tended to show a lower number of sniffs (P = 0.09). During heat exposure, IUTN and IUHS growing goats spent more time resting and exhibited more heat-stress related behaviors such as panting and drinking (P < 0.001); however, no differences were observed between both groups. In conclusion, heat stress during the first third of pregnancy shortened gestation length and influenced the exploratory behavior of the kids in the early life. However, behavior responses to heat stress during the adulthood were not affected by the in utero thermal treatment.

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“…Existen diversos tipos de EE, por ejemplo el social, que incluye interacciones animal-animal y humano-animal, el ocupacional, el físico, que involucra la calidad y cantidad de espacio disponible, y el sensorial que implica la estimulación de los sentidos (Young, 2013). Estudios en el cerdo indican que el EE incrementa la aparición de comportamientos propios de su especie como el exploratorio (Yang et al, 2018) y de juego (Martin et al, 2015), mientras que disminuye estados negativos como la agresividad (Marcet-Rius et al, 2019) y el estrés prenatal (Brajon et al, 2017), además de favorecer habilidades de aprendizaje (Jansen et al, 2009;Douglas et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

“…There are diverse types of EE, for instance social EE, including animal-animal and human-animal interactions, occupational EE, physical EE, involving the quality and quantity of available space, and sensorial EE, implying senses stimulation (Young, 2013). Studies in pigs indicate that EE increases the incidence of behaviors typical from the species, such as exploratory behavior (Yang et al, 2018) and playing behavior (Martin et al, 2015), while it decreases negative states such as aggressiveness (Marcet-Rius et al, 2019) and pre-natal stress (Brajon et al, 2017), in addition to fostering learning abilities (Jansen et al, 2009;Douglas et al, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Untitled

Beristain

Ramos

Aguirre

et al. 2020

rbio

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Introducción La Organización Mundial de Sanidad Animal (OIE), que cuenta con más de 150 países miembros, considera que un animal está en bienestar cuando éste está sano, cómodo, bien alimentado, seguro, es capaz de expresar su comportamiento y no sufre estados desagradables como el dolor, miedo y angustia (OIE, 2008). Desafortunadamente, la producción intensiva de animales para beneficio de los humanos ha mermado la capacidad de las unidades de producción para proveer bienestar animal (AW). En el caso particular del cerdo, la alta demanda en el consumo de su carne ha generado un incremento en su producción y en la forma en la que estos son alojados durante su cadena productiva (USDA-FAS, 2019). En granjas con sistemas de manejo semi-intensivo e intensivo, los cerdos son constantemente expuestos a eventos aversivos como el manejo agresivo por parte de los trabajadores (Tallet et al., 2018), destete precoz (Siegford et al., 2008), la formación de nuevos grupos o mezcla de animales de diferentes edades (Colson et al., 2012), (Verdon et al., 2016), exposición a temperaturas extremas (Parker et al., 2010), y alojamientos con poca o nula estimulación social y sensorial (Merlot et al., 2012; Brajon et al., 2017). Estudios indican que este tipo de condiciones genera estrés en los animales y como consecuencia un pobre bienestar. Uno de los graves problemas del estrés, entendido como una respuesta ante una amenaza real o percibida que altera la homeostasis de un organismo, (McEwen, 2000), es que si ocurre de manera prolongada o continua pueden tener graves efectos negativos. Algunos de los efectos attempts to enter into open arms and risk assessment. In the second experiment, 60 piglets were divided into 4 groups: 1) received enrichment during pregnancylactation, 2) enrichment during weaning, 3) enrichment during pregnancy-lactation-weaning and 4) without enrichment. On post-natal day 70, pigs were exposed to an elevated plus maze. Results showed that pigs from group 1 showed less anxiety during the test compared with groups 3 and 4. This suggested that environmental enrichment during pregnancy-lactation positively impacted the ability of piglets to regulate anxiety.

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Pre-weaning environmental enrichment increases piglets’ object play behaviour on a large scale commercial pig farm

Cited by 54 publications

References 23 publications

Effects of Early and Current Environmental Enrichment on Behavior and Growth in Pigs

Effects of Early and Current Environmental Enrichment on Behavior and Growth in Pigs

Prenatal heat stress effects on gestation and postnatal behavior in kid goats

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