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Development of Acclimation to Reduce Flooring Novelty in Nursery Pigs
The difficulty of moving pigs from nursery to finishing facilities may increase the possibility of unnecessary stress and inefficient moving time. Two common novel flooring surfaces experienced during this transition often include diamond-plate aluminum and concrete. The first objective of this study was to determine if the time for nursery pigs to step onto concrete or aluminum flooring varied (TRIAL 1). The second objective was to determine if acclimation to new flooring surfaces would improve trailer loading time (TRIAL 2). All pigs were housed in raised nursery pens with metal mesh flooring. Both trials contained three replicates. TRIAL 1 included 6 pens of 6 pigs that were exposed to either a section of aluminum (A) or concrete (C) flooring involving only one specific flooring type in each pen. In both trials, A and C were novel to the pigs. Both flooring surfaces measured 0.61 m x 0.61 m. Two pens (A, C) were included in each replicate of TRIAL 1 and four pens were included in each replicate for TRIAL 2. TRIAL 2 included a total of 12 pens of 6 pigs that were concurrently exposed to either both flooring surfaces described in TRIAL 1 for approximately four weeks (FLR), or only the existing metal mesh flooring (CTL). For TRIAL 1, behavior was assessed using focal sampling for the 24 hours after each flooring substrate was placed in the pens. The mean time between the introduction of the flooring surface and the placement of 2 feet on the flooring surface was recorded for each individual pig. For TRIAL 2, trailer loading was video recorded during the transition from nursery to finishing facilities to determine the time elapsed between loading the first pig and the last pig within each pen. The experimental unit in both trials was pen. For each trial, differences between treatment means were tested with Tukey’s tests in SAS 9.4. For TRIAL 1, no difference (P = 0.3183) was observed in the mean amount of time for pigs to place two feet on C (213 ± 1561 s) compared to A (2727 ± 1561 s). For TRIAL 2, no difference (P = 0.2293) was observed in the mean loading time for FLR (121 ± 25 s) and CTL(75 ± 25 s). The results of this pilot study suggest that additional research is necessary to understand the impact of flooring surfaces on the behavior of nursery pigs.
Keywords: Swine, Nursery, Behavior