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Impact of two commercial weaning and transport strategies on piglet behaviour, body weight change, lesions and lameness following transport
Contributor(s):: Golightly, Hannah R., Brown, Jennifer, Bergeron, Renée, Poljak, Zvonimir, Seddon, Yolande M., O’Sullivan, Terri L.
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Domestic Foal Weaning: Need for Re-Thinking Breeding Practices?
| Contributor(s):: Séverine Henry, Hrefna Sigurjónsdóttir, Aziliz Klapper, Julie Joubert, Gabrielle Montier, Martine Hausberger
Artificial weaning is a standard practice known to be one of the most stressful events in a domestic foal’s life. Research has mainly focused on ways to alleviate weaning stress. However, there is still a need for more detailed research on what should constitute best practices with...
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Comparing gradual debonding strategies after prolonged cow-calf contact: Stress responses, performance, and health of dairy cow and calf
| Contributor(s):: Wenker, Margret L., van Reenen, Cornelis G., Bokkers, Eddie A. M., McCrea, Kirste, de Oliveira, Daiana, Sørheim, Kristin, Cao, Yanran, Bruckmaier, Rupert M., Gross, Josef J., Gort, Gerrit, Verwer, Cynthia M.
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Effects of physical enrichment and pair housing before weaning on growth, behaviour and cognitive ability of calves after weaning and regrouping
| Contributor(s):: Zhang, Chenyu, Juniper, Darren T., Meagher, Rebecca K.
Housing unweaned calves individually in barren environments negatively affects their growth, cognitive ability, and adaptability to environmental changes in later life. Social housing has been shown to improve those aspects, whereas physical environmental enrichment has rarely been studied in...
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Cross-fostering alters the post-weaning pig behavioral stress response in a sex-specific manner
| Contributor(s):: Byrd, Christopher J., Young, Jennifer M., Sommer, Dominique M.
The purpose of the current study was to evaluate whether early postnatal stress due to cross-fostering alters the behavioral response to stress in weaned pigs. We hypothesized that piglets who were cross-fostered (FOS) into another existing litter would exhibit heightened behavioral indicators of...
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Group dynamics in a spontaneously established group of newly weaned piglets
| Contributor(s):: Mesarec, Nikolina, Skok, Janko, Škorjanc, Dejan, Prevolnik Povše, Maja
The weaning process poses considerable challenge in pig production. The standard procedure usually involves mixing multiple litters in a relatively dense group where the pigs do not have much space and opportunity to interact uninterruptedly and therefore cannot exhibit the full natural display...
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Impact of early socialization environment on social behavior, physiology and growth performance of weaned piglets
| Contributor(s):: Ji, Wenbo, Bi, Yanju, Cheng, Zheng, Liu, Runze, Zhang, Xiaohong, Shu, Yufu, Li, Xin, Bao, Jun, Liu, Honggui
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Indication that the presence of older conspecifics reduces agonistic behaviour in piglets at weaning
| Contributor(s):: Morrone, Beatrice, Bernardino, Thiago, Tatemoto, Patricia, Rodrigues, Frederico Augusto Mazzocca Lopes, de Moraes, José Evandro, da Cruz, Thiago Dorsa Almeida, Zanella, Adroaldo José
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Effect of late gestational feed restriction and glucogenic precursor on behaviour and performance of Ghezel ewes and their offspring
| Contributor(s):: Ahmadzadeh, Leila, Hosseinkhani, Ali, Taghizadeh, Akbar, Ghasemi-Panahi, Babak, Hamidian, Gholamreza
Maternal undernutrition during pregnancy impairs offspring behaviours and thereby their survival rate indirectly by decreasing lamb birth weight or by deteriorating milk production which in turn limits bonding of the dam with the neonate. This study was aimed to investigate the effect of maternal...
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Pre-weaning socialization and environmental enrichment affect life-long response to regrouping in commercially-reared pigs
| Contributor(s):: Ko, Heng-Lun, Chong, Qiai, Escribano, Damián, Camerlink, Irene, Manteca, Xavier, Llonch, Pol
Weaning and other regrouping events as routine work in commercial farms cause stress to pigs and compromise their welfare. Several studies found positive outcomes to mitigate weaning stress when piglets were socialized (i.e. co-mingled) or raised with enrichment materials in research settings....
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Suckling, weaning, and the development of oral behaviours in dairy calves
| Contributor(s):: Veissier, Isabelle, Caré, Sara, Pomiès, Dominique
Dairy calves are generally separated from their dam at birth. They express non-nutritive oral activities such as licking or sucking other calves or objects, nibbling, or tongue-playing, which have been related to the absence of sucking a teat and ingestive chewing. We hypothesized that the dam,...
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Socialising piglets in lactation positively affects their post-weaning behaviour
| Contributor(s):: Morgan, Talia, Pluske, John, Miller, David, Collins, Teresa, Barnes, Anne L., Wemelsfelder, Françoise, Fleming, Patricia A.
Although commercial farrowing sheds keep individual litters separated, previous studies have suggested that housing systems that allow socialisation of piglets pre-weaning can reduce aggression after weaning. This study tested whether pigs socialised with non-litter mates pre-weaning would show...
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Facilitating ‘learning from mom how to eat like a pig’ to improve welfare of piglets around weaning
| Contributor(s):: Oostindjer, Marije, Kemp, Bas, van den Brand, Henry, Bolhuis, J. Elizabeth
Piglets in commercial husbandry are weaned abruptly and at a rather young age. Many weanling piglets are poorly adapted to ingest solid food, often resulting in a period of underfeeding. The underfeeding generally leads to a poor growth, diarrhoea occurrence and the development of damaging...
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Effect of on farm mixing and slaughter strategy on behaviour, welfare and productivity in Duroc finished entire male pigs
| Contributor(s):: Fàbrega, Emma, Puigvert, Xavier, Soler, Joaquim, Tibau, Joan, Dalmau, Antoni
Animal welfare may be hampered due to a higher incidence of aggressive and sexual behaviours in entire males compared to castrated pigs. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of mixing strategies on behaviour and physiological indicators of welfare and performance. Ninety-six entire...
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Comparison of the effects of weaning and castration when conducted separately or in combination on the behaviour of crossbred beef cattle
| Contributor(s):: Lambertz, Christian, Farke-Röver, Antje, Moors, Eva, Gauly, Matthias
The objective of the present study was to evaluate the behavioural effects of Burdizzo castration of crossbred beef calves when weaned and castrated separately (castrated 8 weeks after weaning) or in combination. Over two consecutive years a total of 111 Limousin×Simmental male calves were...
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Behavioural patterns established during suckling reappear when piglets are forced to form a new dominance hierarchy
| Contributor(s):: Skok, Janko, Prevolnik, Maja, Urek, Tina, Mesarec, Nikolina, Škorjanc, Dejan
Early life experiences considerably influence the behavioural development of the animals in which the social environment plays a crucial role. Neonatal piglets experience intense social (including aggressive) interactions when compete with their littermates for the access to teats on the sow's...
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Laboratory macaques: When to wean?
| Contributor(s):: Prescott, Mark J., Nixon, Mellissa E., Farningham, David A. H., Naiken, Sandiren, Griffiths, Mary-Ann
Worldwide there is large variation in the age at which young macaques destined for use in research are permanently separated from their mothers, and in the subsequent social environment in which they are reared. This stems from variation in minimum weaning ages and rearing practices in guidelines...
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Effects of environmental enrichment and loose housing of lactating sows on piglet behaviour before and after weaning
| Contributor(s):: Oostindjer, Marije, van den Brand, Henry, Kemp, Bas, Bolhuis, J. Elizabeth
Weaning of piglets in commercial husbandry systems is earlier and more abrupt than would happen under natural conditions, resulting in low feed intakes and health and welfare problems in the immediate postweaning period. Piglets in commercial systems generally have limited opportunities to learn...
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Disentangling the effects of weaning stressors on piglets’ behaviour and feed intake: Changing the housing and social environment
| Contributor(s):: Hötzel, Maria J., de Souza, Gisele P. P., Costa, Osmar A. Dalla, Machado Filho, Luiz Carlos P.
Under farming conditions piglets generally face several simultaneous stressors including separation from the dam, an abrupt change from milk to a solid diet and changes in the social and housing environments. In this study we tested the hypothesis that increasing the number of environmental...
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Cross-sucking by dairy calves may become a habit or reflect characteristics of individual calves more than milk allowance or weaning
| Contributor(s):: de Passillé, Anne Marie, Borderas, Fernando, Rushen, Jeffrey
To examine the effects of milk allowance and weaning age on cross-sucking, 45 dairy calves were housed in groups of nine and fed milk and grain-based starter feed from automated feeders and allocated to three treatment groups: (A) Low-Milk Early-Weaned (fed 6L/d of milk until weaned at 47 d of...
