The effect of providing a greater freedom of movement through periodic exercise on the welfare and stress physiology of stall-housed gestating sows and on piglet behaviour
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract In Canada, the 2014 Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Pigs proposed the continued operation of existing stall barns after 2024 on condition that bred sows be given access to periodic exercise. Therefore, this study evaluated the effects of periodic exercise on sow welfare. Sows (n = 180) were assigned to one of three treatments: stall-housed (Control: C); stall-housed and exercised weekly for 10 min (Exercise: E); and group-housed (Group: G). Sow postures and stereotypies were recorded once per week in early, mid and late gestation before (AM) and after (PM) exercise. Female piglets (n = 168 from C, E and G sows) underwent isolation and novel object tests at 19-22 days of age. Postures differed by treatment in AM with G sows lying more and sitting less than C and E sows, which did not differ. In PM, E sows sat more than G sows, with C sows being intermediate. In early gestation, G sows performed fewer stereotypies than E sows, with C sows being intermediate. In mid gestation, G sows performed fewer stereotypies than C and E sows, which did not differ. Piglets from C sows were more active in the novel object test than E and G piglets, which did not differ. Group housing improved sow comfort (indicated by postures) and reduced sow stress (indicated by stereotypies), but periodic exercise did not. Decreased activity level in piglets from sows given greater freedom of movement indicates that gestation housing can influence the behaviour of offspring.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".