While early research suggests space allowance requirements could be reduced for nursery pigs not everyone thinks it is a good idea to jump to conclusions before the actual results are in.

Dr. Yolande Seddon, an Assistant Professor of Swine Behaviour and Welfare in the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences with the University of Saskatchewan’s Western College of Veterinary Medicine says new research suggests space allowance requirements for newly weaned nursery pigs can be reduced without compromising their performance.

Scientists with the Prairie Swine Centre, the Western College of Veterinary Medicine and Newcastle University in partnership with Swine Innovation Porc are looking into how stocking densities influence the performance of newly weaned pigs.

They are comparing the influence of six different space allowances on the growth, behaviour and health of nursery pigs.

Dr. Seddon says the findings will help regulators set stocking density standards for nursery pigs.

However, international livestock veterinarian and consultant Dr. John Carr says this type of work and comments associated should not be released until the data has been finished because this only encourages producers to overstock.

“Until proven different, the welfare codes must be adhered to,” said Dr. Carr, when asked to respond to these comments by Dr. Seddon. “Also there have been many trials over the years, the welfare codes take an average view, so yes some trials may show little difference – but also what health challenges did these pigs have.”

He says the industry needs to wait for the results of the trials and then openly discuss them to see if they are relevant to enhancing the wellbeing and welfare of the Canadian pig.

“Codes of Practice for the Care and Handling of Pigs has a requirement for space allowance for all stages of growing animals to be of a K-value of 0.0335,” said Dr. Seddon. “It does provide for a short term decrease in space allowance at the end of the production phase but really what we are interested in is whether that K-value is appropriate for nursery pigs because a lot of the research to develop set space allowances for growing pigs was done on growing pigs closer to the 60 top 100 kilogram weight range.”

She says the industry doesn’t know a lot about how nursery pigs cope at different space allowances or whether they can handle slightly tight space allowances without it adversely affecting their well-being because they do prefer to overlie each other, especially when they are newly weaned.

So it is possible that we may be able to have a smaller space allowance at that stage of production.

Dr. Seddon says preliminary data shows there have been no real differences in growth rates or in average daily gains of the pigs in the nursery phase across the different density treatments.

Full results are expected by the end of 2017. •

— By Harry Siemens