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Comparison of methods to measure hierarchies dm group-housed sows and the interaction with feeding regime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2017

F Brouns ,
S A Edwards  and
P R English
F Brouns
Affiliation:
Scottish Agricultural College
S A Edwards
Affiliation:
Scottish Agricultural College
P R English
Affiliation:
University of Aberdeen, 581 King Street, Aberdeen AB9 1UD
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Extract

Dominance allows animals priority of access to resources when these are limited. It is common practice to feed dry sows once or twice daily a relatively small amount of food. This can lead to high competition for food, when there are no provisions for individual feeding of group housed sows. In contrast, competition for food should be low when offered ad libitum. This study was designed to investigate the effect of feeding regime on the measurement of hierarchies in group housed dry sows.

Four groups of 12 multiparous sows were housed in deep straw pens (3.1 m2/sow). Two groups were offered a high fibre diet ad libitum from a three-space hopper (LC) and two groups were floor-fed 3 kg/sow of a standard diet once daily (HC). The diet composition is given in Brouns et al (1992).

Groups were allocated to treatment after service. After two months on treatment, the dominance of every sow in each pen was determined in a feed competition test between all possible dyads of sows. A more detailed description of this test is given in Brouns et al (1992). The results of this test indicated how many pen mates each sow dominated (DR). This was used to calculate an index of linearity for the hierarchy (Appleby, 1983) giving a value between 0 and 1, where 1 indicates a completely linear hierarchy.

Type
Joint WPSA/BSAP Sessions
Information
Proceedings of the British Society of Animal Production (1972) , Volume 1993: Winter meeting , March 1993 , pp. 225
Copyright
Copyright © The British Society of Animal Production 1993

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References

Appleby, M C. 1983. The probability of linearity in hierarchies. Animal Behaviour, 31, 600–608.Google Scholar
Brouns, F, MacMenemey, F, Edwards, S A. 1992. Dominance hierarchies in sows and the consequence for liveweight gain in competitive and non-competitive feeding systems. Proceedings BSAP Winter Meeting.Google Scholar