Associations between hoof lesions and reproductive performance of sows in three Greek herds

Hoof lesions, which are very common in modern sows, were associated with high risk of early culling and compromised welfare of sows. Some hoof lesions were also associated with decreased litter weight, increased pre-weaning piglet mortality and higher odds of stillborn and crushed piglets. Evidently, if hoof lesions negatively affect not only sow longevity but also the important reproductive parameters which determine the utilisation of breeding herd’s capacity and profitability of the farm, they should be on the target for improvement. In this study we investigated the associations between the severity of hoof lesions and three of the most important reproductive parameters of the sows, the number of liveborn and weaned piglets and the wean-to-first service interval, in three Greek farrow-to-finish herds.

All studied sows were individually housed during their previous gestations. Sows were examined for lesions on the sole, the heel, the white line, the wall and the coronary band and for toe and dew claw overgrowth, before farrowing. Data on the examined reproductive parameters was retrieved from the herds’ productivity databases. Since, scoring of lesions on several hoof sites resulted in many correlated variables for each sow examined, we employed factor analysis to create a smaller set of uncorrelated variables (factors) which contained all the information of the original variables, and produced the corresponding factor scores. The number of liveborn and weaned piglets was associated with the produced factor scores in two multivariable linear regression models, whereas the possible association between the wean-to-first service interval and the factor scores was modelled with the use of zero-inflated negative binomial regression.

The number of liveborn piglets was negatively associated with factor scores representing lesions on the heel (P < 0.001) and the sole of front feet (P = 0.019). The number of weaned piglets was also negatively associated with factor scores representing lesions on the heel (P = 0.003) of any foot, on the sole of front feet (P = 0.001) and on the white line, the sole and the wall of rear feet (P = 0.008), while the wean-to-first service interval was associated with factor scores representing lesions on the heel of any foot (P = 0.02), on the sole of front feet (P = 0.02) and of the dew claw length of front feet (P = 0.009).

Our results indicated that combinations of lesions on the dorsal and ventral part of the hooves, negatively affected the reproduction parameters considered, emphasizing the importance of general improvement of sows’ hoof health.

Disclosure of Interest: None Declared.