The use of a rooting substrate by fifteen day old piglets

Extract

The ingestion of creep feed by piglets depends upon them displaying suitable exploratory behaviours away from the sows udder. However, sows milk has an excellent FCR and it may be argued that, where the udder is available, exploration away from it is a failure to optimise the use of available food resources. A corrolary to this is that those piglets displaying exploratory behaviour away from the sows udder will be those piglets for which further udder massage shows no net gain i.e. those exploiting the maximum potential of the udder and those for whom the udder shows very little benefit. The former group will be characterised by heavier weights and faster growth rates. The latter group will be characterised by lighter weights and slower growth rates. It may be assumed that animals exist on a continuum between these two states. In commercial conditions the latter group is typically fostered off or culled. This project tested the hypothesis that, in healthy litters (thus excluding the latter group), exploratory behaviour away from the udder will be displayed proportional to the weight of the piglet.