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A note on the changes in leg weakness in pigs after being transferred from confinement housing to pasture lots

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2010

A. P. Sather
A. P. Sather
Affiliation:
Research Station, Agriculture Canada, Lacombe, Alberta, TOC 1S0, Canada
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Extract

It is a popular belief, supported by several scientific studies (Vaughan, 1971; McPhee and Laws, 1976; Fredeen and Sather, 1978; Sather and Fredeen, 1982) that leg weakness will diminish in young stock of breeding age after they are transferred from confinement housing to pasture lots. However, Nakano, Aherne and Thompson (1981) working with boars from the Canadian Swine ‘Record of Performance’ (ROP) testing programme found that no improvement in gait resulted after the animals were transferred from confinement housing with solid concrete flooring to pasture lots. The number of animals in the study was limited. All of these reports dealt only with the recovery of pigs from leg weakness and did not include pigs with sound legs at the beginning of the pasture period (approx. 90 kg live weight).

Type
Research Article
Information
Animal Production , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , June 1987 , pp. 450 - 453
Copyright
Copyright © British Society of Animal Science 1987

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References

REFERENCES

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