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A decreased feed intake is considered one of the first signs of disease in farm animals. Feeding-related individual data collected by electronic feeding systems may thus be useful in detecting illness at an early stage. The aim of this study was to determine changes in individual-level voluntary feed intake in growing pigs before and after a bout of sickness modelled by clinical lameness or an acute tail (biting) lesion, which together count for a significant part of overall health problems in intensive pig production. The data consisted of individual records of health and day-level feed intake in fattening pigs between about 40 and 120 kg obtained from the Finnish progeny test farm. Feed was available ad libitum from automatic single-space feeders. Two time periods in relation to diagnosis (day 0), day −50 to 0 (pre-) and day 0 to +50 (post-), were modelled separately for both diagnoses using hierarchical linear models with random and repeated effects. All healthy animals in the affected animals' pens were used as controls. The number of pigs in the different analyses were 243/551 (cases/controls, pre-tail lesion), 205/693 (post-tail lesion), 116/588 (pre-lameness) and 165/892 (post-lameness). Feed intake in the study animals was affected by sex, weight at arrival to the farm, health status (lame or tail bitten case vs healthy control), eventual recovery (culled or dead vs recovering to slaughter condition), the day relative to diagnosis and approximate age (the day on the farm), with the four latter factors involved in multiple interactions. Feed intake started decreasing already 2–3 weeks pre-diagnosis in future lame or tail bitten animals, suggesting a common predisposing factor such as reactive coping. Feed intake decreased substantially (13–99%) from control levels in sick animals, with the level dependant on diagnosis, degree of eventual recovery and age. Lame animals ingested two to three times less than tail bitten ones at diagnosis. Within both diagnoses, culled-to-be animals ingested roughly half the relative amount of those recovering to slaughter condition, suggesting that relative feed intake at diagnosis may predict the outcome of disease. Younger animals were generally more severely affected than older ones. Anorexia was prolonged up to about 30 days in culled-to-be lame animals in contrast to all other groups modeled, which started recovery immediately upon diagnosis and initiated treatment. The observed changes and differences in feed intake may indicate differences in animal welfare.

This study investigated the effects of providing nest-building opportunities prior to parturition on sow serum non-esterified fatty acid (NEFA) concentrations and on colostrum intake of neonatal piglets during the early lactation period. We kept a total of 33 sows in (1) CRATE (N=12): the farrowing crate closed (210×80 cm), with provision of a bucketful of sawdust, (2) PEN (N=11): the farrowing crate opened, with provision of a bucketful of sawdust, (3) NEST (N=10): the farrowing crate opened, with provision of abundant nest-building materials. All sows included in the experiment were confined to the farrowing crates after the first piglet was delivered until seven days post-parturition. We collected sow blood samples for a NEFA assay via indwelling ear vein catheters on days −3, −2, −1, +1, +2, +4, and +7 from parturition. To determine piglet IgG, IgM, and IgA concentrations, we collected blood samples from two healthy female piglets [N (piglet): CRATE=6, PEN=8, NEST=8] from among the gilts in each treatment at 0 h, 12 h, 24 h, 48 h, and 7 d via the jugular vein with a disposable syringe. Piglet growth during early lactation was slower in CRATE than in PEN (P=0.04). Post-natal mortality, including piglet deaths resulting from crushing or other factors, indicated no differences between the three treatments (P>0.10). Compared with sows in limited nest-building environments, sows in NEST tended to have higher serum NEFA concentrations during the experimental periods (P=0.07). Sow serum NEFA concentrations positively correlated with plasma oxytocin concentrations (rs=0.28, P

The aim of this paper is to review existing literature concerning the impact of lameness and claw lesions on welfare, health and production of sows. When using the five freedoms, a common method to conceptualize animal welfare, to assess the impact of lameness, it appears that lameness as a single disease, may affect all of the freedoms. There is a wide variability with respect to the impact of claw lesions on welfare of sows, because only a proportion of animals are affected. Lameness affects welfare due to physically reduced locomotion ability, pain or general discomfort and sickness behavior. Cross-sectional studies show that the within-herd prevalence of sow lameness is quite high and may range from 8.8% to 16.9%. There are several reasons for lameness and claw lesions and they are very difficult to be identified during herd-level clinical examinations. Therefore, many researchers have studied the sows post-mortem and quite often found more than one lesion likely to cause lameness. Not all lesions are associated with lameness, but the location and severity of the lesions are important factors. Lameness can also affect the general health of the sow and predispose to loss of body condition, shoulder lesions and urogenital infections. Longevity of lame sows is decreased when compared with that of healthy-legged animals. Acutely and severely lame sows are removed immediately from the herd, and chronic, less severe lameness can affect the performance of sows and thus indirectly lead to culling. However, only few articles report about production or fertility figures of lame vs non-lame sows, except for ample data on longevity. In conclusion, lameness of sows is an important welfare and health problem and may also severely affect the profitability of sow herds.

Tail biting is an important animal welfare problem that is known to negatively affect production performance. We studied how tail biting influences the production performance in fattening pigs. Production performance was measured as the average daily gain (ADG), gross feed conversion ratio (FCR), red meat percentage (Meat%). Pigs' genetic merit, gender and breed were taken into account in the analysis. In addition, differences between breeds and genders in the prevalence of tail biting were studied. The data were collected from a farm and they included individual records for 3190 pigs. Altogether, 11.4% pigs were identified as victims. Between boars, females and barrows there were not significant differences in the risk for being a tail biting victim. Yorkshire (Y) pigs were identified as victims more often than Landrace (L) pigs, 13.8% and 10.0%, respectively (p = 0.001). Non-victims had a greater ADG than victims (33.4 g/d difference in observed means but 10.8 g/d difference when adjusted to genetic merit). These values correspond to 1 to 3% reduction in ADG. By contrast, no significant differences between victims' and non-victims' FCR and Meat% were found. The results highlight the need to take into account genetics, breed and other factors affecting production performance when estimating the effects of a health disorder.