Reproduction performances and conditions of group-housed non ...

- Paper III -
Number of skin lesions. The number of skin lesions at mating were significant lower in
herds with escape possibilities compared to herds without escape possibilities in the mating
unit (13.7 vs. 30.9, n=400 vs. 142, P=0.01). There was no effect (P>0.1) of parity group and
no interaction (P>0.1) between +/- escape possibilities and parity group for number of le-
sions at mating.
There was a significant interaction between parity group and escape possibility in the pregnancy
unit for number of skin lesions three weeks after mating (P0.1) was found on aggressions
three weeks after mating and no parity group x escape interaction (P>0.1). There
was no effect of parity group on % in box at weaning (P>0.1).
Lying behaviour. As shown in Table 9, parity group affected the probability of lying solitary
at weaning (p=0.04) in that, the probability of lying solitary was higher for sows older
than third parity compared to younger sows. There was no effect of +/- escape possibilities
(P=0.6) on lying solitary at weaning and no effect of parity group (P=0.3), +/- escape possibilities
(P=0.6) or interaction (P=0.4) for lying solitary three weeks after mating.
Fear tests. In the HA-test test, first litter sows were more likely to be tested fearful compared
to the other parity groups (P=0.03) as shown in Table 9. No main effect of parity
group (P= 0.3, 0.4), +/- escape possibilities (P=0.5, 0.4) or interaction between parity group
and +/- escape possibilities (P=0.3, 0.8) were found for the FHA-test or the FHT-test, respectively.
4. Discussion
With a few exceptions as mentioned in 2.3, the indicators were possible to perform in
commercial sow herds at the planned stages at weaning, mating, three weeks after mating
and/or at the following farrowing.
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