Pig behaviour linked to sanitary conditions and diets.

Pig behaviour linked to sanitary conditions and diets. There is a connection between damaging behaviour in pigs, sanitary conditions and diet formulations. How exactly, was presented by Dutch researchers recently. The researchers, attached to Wageningen University, the Netherlands and De Heus Animal Nutrition, published their outcomes recently in an article in Plos One. Reducing crude protein levels in pigs. The scientists described that the tendency to reduce crude protein levels in pig diets to increase protein efficiency may also increase the occurrence of damaging behaviours such as ear and tail biting. This, they said, is particularly for pigs kept under sub-optimal health conditions. The researchers studied 576 tail-docked growing-finishing entire male pigs in 64 pens, subjected to low vs. high sanitary conditions, and fed a normal crude protein diet vs a low crude protein diet (80% of normal crude protein diet) ad libitum, with a basal amino acid profile or supplemented amino acid profile with extra threonine, tryptophan and methionine. Vaccination and antibiotics for pigs The high sanitary condition pigs were vaccinated in the first 9 weeks of life and received antibiotics at arrival of experimental farm at 10 weeks, after which they were kept in a disinfected part of the farm with a strict hygiene protocol. The low sanitary condition pigs were kept on the same farm in non-disinfected pens to which manure from another pig farm was introduced fortnightly.