Increase sustainability of organic pig production with more vital piglets

Summary

About every third piglet dies before weaning within the Danish organic pig production, making the organic piglet mortality higher, than what is seen in the conventional indoor production. The high piglet mortality is in conflict with both the idea of increased animal welfare and the organic principles. As most of the piglets die within the first days after farrowing, improving the thermal conditions around the time of farrowing is important, since the thermal environment in many cases may be a significant contributor to piglet death also for piglets that are categorized as crushed or starved to death.
This paper describes a subproject under the larger Danish VIPiglets project with the overall aim to reduce piglet mortality in Danish organic pig production. The subproject described in this paper has three overall aims concerning 1) ways to improve the thermal environment around the time of farrowing 2) how the temperature and humidity inside the farrowing hut relate to piglet mortality 3) how temperature affects farrowing duration and inter birth interval.
Studies concerning aim two and three are still ongoing and so no results are presented. In the study concerning aim one the average total litter size was 17 piglets and total piglet mortality was 31%. The study showed that providing sows with access to poplar trees (a shaded area) significantly affected paddock use compared to sows without a shaded area (control sows), by increasing the use of the paddock before farrowing and day zero and one post partum (pp) (F4,218=2.91, p<0.05) and the paddock use particularly increased at hot temperatures. Furthermore the sows with access to poplar were lying more when outside compared to controls (29 % vs 18 % respectively; F1,70=15.13, p<0.0005). In general the sows were seen lying more in the paddock at high temperature compared to low temperature particularly before farrowing, on day 0 and 1 pp and again after day 11 pp.