A study of the influence of shredded paper bedding at parturition on hypothermia, survival and growth of piglets and indices of sow welfare

Extract

Hypothermia is common in newborn piglets because of the failure to provide sufficient thermal comfort in the preferred resting areas adjacent to the udder in early life. One major reason for this is the fact that most farrowing pens have slatted floors and a deficiency of such flooring is the difficulty of using bedding to reduce hypothermia of newborn piglets and to protect their delicate tissues from the relative abrasiveness of the floor. Shredded waste paper bedding may have useful applications in such situations because of its texture and cohesiveness, qualities which slow up the rate at which it is voided through the slats relative to other bedding materials. Such paper bedding was evaluated in a controlled experiment.

The study was carried out in a large commercial farm with Large White (LW) and Landrace (LR) first cross sows which were mated to LW, LR, LW x LR and Duroc boars. The farrowing pens measured 150 x 270 cm with a front creep area (150 x 55 cm) and the farrowing crate, which was fitted with farrowing ‘cradles', was positioned centrally in the pen. The floor was fully slatted (plastic slats) except for the concrete floored front creep area.