Does pre-weaning mixing and/or object enrichment improve piglet behaviour, welfare, and performance around weaning?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
While abrupt weaning is a common practice in commercial swine barns, it subjects piglets to numerous changes at once which is often associated with negative welfare. Our objective was to study the effects of pre-weaning socialization (starting at 1 to 3 days of age) in multi-litter groups as well as object enrichment (burlap sheet) in the pre- and post-weaning environment. We compared piglet performance, behaviour, and welfare across 6 treatments that combined group size (1 vs. 2 vs. 4 litters mixed pre-weaning) and burlap provision (yes vs. no). We recorded piglet behaviour, piglet body weights, and sow and piglet lesion scores. An ANOVA linear model was run on all normal conforming data, while data that did not meet the normality criteria were transformed or analyzed using a non-parametric test. SOCIAL ENRICHMENT (PRE-WEANING MIXING): Increased burlap use and cross-sucking with group size (P < 0.1). Decreased biting among weaned piglets when mixed in groups of 4 litters pre-weaning (P = 0.03). Improved piglet lesion scores 1-week post-weaning (P = 0.07) and reduced the worsening of sow lesions (P = 0.05). Had no effect on total piglet mortality, however a lower proportion of piglets were crushed by the sow as the number of litters mixed increased (P = 0.02). OBJECT ENRICHMENT (BURLAP): Reduced biting between piglets pre- (P = 0.07) and post- (P < 0.001) weaning. Reduced pen object manipulation (P = 0.006) and displacements throughout the pen (P = 0.003) but tended to reduce fighting throughout the pen (P = 0.06). Also tended to improve piglet lesion scores after weaning (0.05 < P < 0.10). Had no effect on piglet mortality. Piglet weights and number of piglets weaned per sow were not affected by either treatment factor (P>0.10). Overall, social and object enrichment allow piglets to socialize with others at a younger age and redirect their attention and aggression toward objects such as burlap, which does not negatively impact piglet performance and can improve piglet behaviour and welfare around weaning.
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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 | 0.001 |
| 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".