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

- Paper III -
between the 14 herds. As system differences previously have shown to influence the results
of human approach tests (Marchant-Forde et al., 2003), the between-herd variation should
be interpreted with caution.
For managers of herds with group housed sows, information of the sows' condition would
be very useful in relation to analysing and improving animal welfare and perhaps also productivity.
Since it is likely that the sows’ general condition, to a large extent is influenced
by management related factors, it may be difficult to predict the presence of e.g. stress, fear
and unequal feed intake merely on the knowledge of layout related factors like feeding system
and escape possibilities. Therefore, it seems important that managers are able to make
an on site judgement of the sows’ condition. The indicators presented in this paper are possible
to perform in practice, and taken together the results indicate that they could be relevant
indicators of social stress, fear and feed intake. As a consequence, these indicators
might be relevant ingredients of a management tool to analyse and improve the welfare and
productivity of group housed sows.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the participating farmers and the technicians Henrik K. Andersen,
Kristine R. Hansen, Michael Hansen, Orla Nielsen, Niels H. Thomsen, and Helge Yde
for their much appreciated assistance in carrying out the data collection. The authors also
wish to express their gratitude to Erik Jørgensen for valuable contributions to the statistical
analyses.
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