Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
approach a human than pigs that did not receive any injection (Hemsworth
et al.,
1996a).
For example, the withdrawal distance was increased, the orientation of the head towards
a human was decreased and the time to interact with a human was increased in injected
pigs compared with control pigs.
In conventional farms, most sows are bred by artificial insemination. Two techniques
are widely used, namely, deposition of the semen in the cervix or in the uterus, several
centimetres beyond the cervix. In both situations, the catheter is fixed in the cervix with
a thickened head in a flexible material. It should be done gently in order to avoid injury.
However, the presence of blood on the catheter tip at withdrawal or in backflow semen
is common (Sbardella
et al.,
2014). This is especially true in the case of intrauterine
insemination, as shown by the presence of blood in more than 20% of sows inseminated
with this technique. To our knowledge, it has not be evaluated whether the trauma
associated with the entry of the catheter is painful or not but it can be suspected that it is.
12.3.3
Impact of positive handlings
Many breeders make special efforts to socialise their gilts with humans by giving them
additional contacts and spending time within the groups of females. They hope this will
lead to long term advantages in their relationship with their sows so that they would
be easier to handle and less reactive to the presence of humans around farrowing,
thereby facilitating observation and care to piglets. Sows are gregarious and they may
rapidly become gregarious towards humans. For instance, Dellmeier and Friend (1991)
suggested that human mimicry of sow's social greeting (i.e. sow-sow greeting) could
reduce aggressive responses. Remaining passive to the approach of a vocalizing sow will
give her the possibility to investigate and touch the person, and this would help the sow
to form a positive perception of humans.
Positive handling consisting in soft tactile, visual and auditory contacts during the last
days of pregnancy can be effective in rapidly increasing the approach reactions of sows
towards the handler. Some parts of the body would be more sensitive than others, even
if this has not been scientifically tested yet. Such positive handling would be even more
efficient when sows are fed. Dellmeier and Friend (1991) took the example of extensively
reared sows to claim that sows can be readily tamed by gentle touching and scratching or
stroking. Indeed, it was demonstrated that one minute of contact per day was sufficient
to increase the percentage of sows approaching the handler from 33 to 83% seven days
later (English
et al.,
1999). Approach reactions of gilts also increased very rapidly with
such contact but the level remained lower (59%) than for more experienced sows (English
et al.,
1999). Giving a food reward (a nut) in addition to 1-min of tactile contact during
10 d at the end of pregnancy was also shown to improve the confidence score in humans
(Andersen
et al.,
2006).
The effects of positive handling on maternal behaviour are not clear. Generally, authors
reported no effect on nursing behaviour, posture changes or piglet mortality (Andersen
et
al.,
2006; English
et al.,
1999). However, English
et al.
(1999) found that positive handling
of sows decreased the interval between births, and this depended on the parity. In a more
