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Interdependence of welfare outcome measures and potential confounding factors on finishing pig farms

Lookup NU author(s): Emerita Professor Sandra Edwards

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Abstract

The factors influencing the observed prevalence of some welfare outcome measures were investigated as part of a larger project examining the feasibility and benefits of incorporating on-farm welfare outcome assessments into UK Pig Farm Assurance Schemes. All finishing pigs (>40 kg) on six farms that had pens containing 25 pigs or less were assessed for dirtiness, body lesions, tail lesions, bursitis, lameness, oral behaviour and pigs requiring hospitalisation. The overall small number of significant correlations between the measures across all farms (29 out of a possible 120) and the lack of a significant correlation between any pair of measures on all six or even five farms suggests that no measure can be reliably replaced by another. On the three farms with the highest farm prevalence of dirtiness there were significant negative correlations between pen prevalences of dirtiness and recorded tail and/or body lesions (p

Publication metadata

Author(s): Mullan S, Edwards SA, Butterworth A, Whay HR, Main DCJ

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Applied Animal Behaviour Science

Year: 2009

Volume: 121

Issue: 1

Pages: 25-31

ISSN (print): 0168-1591

ISSN (electronic): 1872-9045

Publisher: Elsevier BV

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2009.07.002

DOI: 10.1016/j.applanim.2009.07.002

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