Pilot: Effect of early life socialisation on piglets’ productivity and social behaviour.

Abstract

Animal welfare becomes increasingly important in today’s society. One of the animals often discussed in welfare debates are pigs. Partly due to the fact that, on most commercial farms, piglets have no contact with piglets from other litters before weaning, which often leads to increased aggression and stress during the weaning period. In contrary to the natural situation, where pigs live in social groups called sounders and piglets interact with each other from about day ten onward. To increase the social skills of the piglets on a commercial farm, early life socialisation can be used. To enable this process the barrier between the farrowing crates of two or more litters can be removed whilst the sows remain in their crates. This enables the piglets to freely co-mingle. Previous studies have shown that it not only increases the social skills of the piglets, but also decreases aggression overtime because of a more quickly establishing of a hierarchy, while maintaining the weight gain of the piglets. The aim of this pilot study is to investigate a research question about early life socialisation of piglets from the Tolakker farm, whereby a small group of animals were used as a first step to investigate which methods and materials work best in a commercial environment and make recommendations for future studies. The research is based on the question what the effect of early life socialisation on the piglets’ productivity and positive social behaviour is. Sixty-five piglets from six litters were divided into two groups, Socialised (S) consisting of 40 animals and Unsocialised (US) consisting of 25 animals. The socialised group was mixed on day 14. Four piglets in each group were selected as the focal animals. Behavioural observation (2-min focal scan sampling) using an ethogram took place on 17 different days between day 6 and 57. The skin lesions score was measured pre- and post-mixing, including weaning, and just before leaving the farm. Weight of all piglets was recorded on day 3, 13, 27 and 55. Results showed that socialisation does not significantly affect the amount of social behaviour or the number of lesions. Bodyweight on the other hand was lower in the socialised group compared to the unsocialised group, especially at the end of the weaning period. Unfortunately, because of the small number of healthy animals and the practical issues of the farm environment, no solid conclusions could be drawn from the results. More research is needed, taking the many recommendations into consideration.