Production results on the "Sow comfort" farrowing pen for loose housed sows

The objective of the present work was to collect preliminary production data on a newly-developed farrowing pen for individually loose-housed sows and to use these results to produce a pen for commercial practice which has a high piglet survival rate and improved sow and piglet welfare.

The “Sow Comfort” farrowing pen” (7.9 m2) comprises two compartments: a “nest area” and an activity/dunging area with a threshold in between. The nest area has solid side walls, sloped walls on three of the sides and a hay rack on the fourth wall allowing free access to hay or straw. The nest area had two zones with floor heating covered by a 30 mm thick rubber mattress. Forty clinically health sows (28 Australian sows and 12 Norwegian, balanced for parity) were used in the first experiment. In a commercial farm, 350 Norwegian LY sows were tested in the system.

The preliminary results show that the production results were similar to, or better than, those reported for other types of pens for individually loose housed sows. Mortality of live born piglets was 12.1±2.9 % in the Norwegian sows and 12.9±2.0 % in the Australian sows whereas the number of weaned piglets in both countries was 12.1±0.4 and 9.1±0.3, respectively. Overlying was the most common causes of death and were significantly affected by parity and litter size. All sows showed a high level of communication with their piglets, and primiparous sows communicated significantly more with their newborns during the birth process than the pluriparous sows. At parturition, 33.3% of the sows were resting with the back towards the back wall whereas 41.7% rested towards the threshold. In 50% of the nursings, the sows were resting against the back wall while 30% of the nursings occurred towards the threshold. In a commercial version of this pen, without the threshold but with all other pen characteristics remaining, we ran around 350 LY-sows with different parities over 7 different batches through this pen system in one lactation. The results showed that piglet mortality declined in the first batch from around 15 % to below 12 percent in the 7th batch, clearly showing that more experience with this pen system created really good production results and with a relatively small management effort by the farmer.

This pen system clearly stimulates the sow to perform better as mothers and releases the farmer from some of the management practices without impairing the production results. With an average og 14 liveborn piglets, these results shows that this pen is a promising alternative to other farrowing pens for loose-housed sows, and that it also can match the results from farrowing crates.

Disclosure of Interest: None Declared.