Porganic, a research organic pig farm: overall presentation and two examples of research programs

Summary

In a first part, this presentation describes the main characteristics of the Inrae organic pig farm (Porganic) located in Rouillé (86480, France). Secondly, it describes the protocol and results of an experiment performed in Porganic that compares three sources of iron (100 mg dextran iron injected at 4 days of age, soil from the farm distributed from 4 days of age, dry river peat distributed from 4 days of age). Measures concern essentially the haematologic status and suggest that the dry river peat is a very promising solution. This experiment was a part of the Era-Net CORE Organic Cofund project (Power project: https://projects.au.dk/coreorganiccofund/core-organic-cofund-projects/power/). In a third part, this presentation describes the aims and the main measures of two experiments that will be performed in 2022. The aims of these experiments are to develop strategies to prevent undesired behaviours (mounting, aggressions) in intact male pigs and to avoid boar taint (androstenone, skatole) in the end products. Two levels will be studies (genetic within the H2020 PPILOW project (https://www.ppilow.eu/; feeding with the French CASDAR project named Farinelli).