Risks associated with preweaning mortality in 855 litters on 39 commercial outdoor pig farms in England

A prospective longitudinal study was carried out on 39 outdoor breeding pig farms in England in 2003 and 2004 to investigate the risks associated with mortality in liveborn preweaning piglets. Researchers visited each farm and completed a questionnaire with the farmer and made observations of the paddocks, huts and pigs. The farmer recorded the number of piglets born alive and stillborn, fostered on and off and the number of piglets that died before weaning for 20 litters born after the visit. Data were analysed from a cohort of 9424 liveborn piglets from 855 litters. Overall 1274 liveborn piglets (13.5%) died before weaning. A mixed effect binomial model was used to investigate the associations between preweaning mortality and farm and litter level factors, controlling for litter size and number of piglets stillborn and fostered. Increased risk of mortality was associated with fostering piglets over 24h of age, organic certification or membership of an assurance scheme with higher welfare standards, farmer's perception that there was a problem with pest birds, use of medication to treat coccidiosis and presence of lame sows on the farm. Reduced mortality was associated with insulated farrowing huts and door flaps, women working on the farm and the farmer reporting a problem with foxes.

Associations between membership of farm assurance and organic certification schemes and compliance with animal welfare legislation

Animal health (AH) defines the outcome of their inspections of livestock holdings as full compliance with the legislation and welfare code (A), compliance with the legislation but not the code (B), non-compliance with legislation but no pain, distress or suffering obvious in the animals (C) or evidence of unnecessary pain or unnecessary distress (D). The aim of the present study was to investigate whether membership of farm assurance or organic certification schemes was associated with compliance with animal welfare legislation as inspected by AH. Participating schemes provided details of their members, past and present, and these records were matched against inspection data from AH. Multivariable multilevel logistic binomial models were built to investigate the association between compliance with legislation and membership of a farm assurance/organic scheme. The percentage of inspections coded A, B, C or D was 37.1, 35.6, 20.2 and 7.1 per cent, respectively. Once adjusted for year, country, enterprise, herd size and reason for inspection, there was a pattern of significantly reduced risk of codes C and D compared with A and B, in certified enterprises compared with the enterprises that were not known to be certified in all species.

A cross-sectional study of the prevalence and associated risk factors for capped hock and the associations with bursitis in weaner, grower and finisher pigs from 93 commercial farms in England

The prevalence of capped hock in 5601 post-weaning pigs from 93 pig farms in England was 17.2%. The prevalence increased with age. Once adjusted for age, the lowest prevalence of capped hock was observed in pigs kept on soil floors (usually covered with deep straw bedding). There was no significant increase in the risk of capped hock in pigs kept on solid concrete floors with deep straw bedding. However, pigs kept on solid concrete with some, or the entire pen, sparsely bedded and pigs kept on partially or fully slatted floors had an approximately threefold increased risk of capped hock. This did not vary significantly between these four floor types. This was in contrast to the associated risks for bursitis in the same pigs, where as the floor went from highly resilient (straw and solid floors) to hard and perforated (fully slatted) the risk of bursitis increased in a similar way to a dose response. No other variables that were measured were associated with a change in risk for capped hock, while observation of pigs slipping or slip marks and wet, dirty and worn pens were also associated risks for bursitis. These results indicate that capped hock and bursitis are both affected by exposure to floors, but in different ways. The prevalence of capped hock was associated only with floor hardness, with deep straw protecting the pigs, while bursitis was associated with both changes in bedding depth (hardness), floor material (soil versus concrete) and floor construction (solid versus slatted floors) and in factors associated with locomotion (slipping and slip marks). These results indicate that the aetiology of capped hock and bursitis might differ.