In order to evaluate at the slaughterhouse external carcass lesions on heavy pigs (170 kg) as potential welfare indicators, and the prevalence of ham defects determining ham exclusion from Protected ...Designation of Origin (PDO) markets, 732 pig batches from northern Italy were monitored during a 12-month period, and then processed analysing the effect of slaughter season, overnight lairage, and production type. On the slaughter line, skin scratches were separately scored in the posterior region (defined as the area including the hind legs and the tail) and the anterior one (as the remaining area), while the whole carcass was examined for external hematomas. Chronic ear and tail lesions referable to the rearing phase, and bursitis were recorded as retrospective welfare indicators. The annual median prevalence of carcasses per batch with severe anterior scratches was 64% while 46.4% had severe posterior scratches. The highest autumn score for both skin scratches (P < 0.001) and traumatic ham defects (P = 0.005) is reflected in the positive correlation between severe posterior scratches and ham hematomas (r2 = 0.27; P < 0.001). Overnight lairage batches resulted in higher prevalence for scratches, while among ham defects only veining increased. Among binary records, only ear lesions were frequently recorded (annual median = 10%). A comparison analysis between pigs in and out of PDO circuit was performed to evaluate the variation related to the different genetics, showing differences for ear and tail lesions and for almost all the considered ham defects. The present study confirms that skin lesions represent a problem also for heavy pigs and that overnight lairage and season can affect their prevalence, with the associated possibility to give ham defects. Ear lesions are suitable to be used as retrospective welfare indicator, while tail lesions usage is nowadays limited by the extensive use of tail docking.
For the most part solutions to farm animal welfare issues, such as piglet mortality, are likely to lie within the scientific disciplines of environmental design and genetic selection, however ...understanding the ecological basis of some of the complex dynamics observed between parent and offspring could make a valuable contribution. One interesting, and often discussed, aspect of mortality is the propensity for it to be sex-biased. This study investigated whether known physiological and behavioural indicators of piglet survival differed between the sexes and whether life history strategies (often reported in wild or feral populations) relating to parental investment were being displayed in a domestic population of pigs. Sex ratio (proportion of males (males/males+females)) at birth was 0.54 and sex allocation (maternal investment measured as piglet birth weight/litter weight) was statistically significantly male-biased at 0.55 (t(35) = 2.51 P = 0.017), suggesting that sows invested more in sons than daughters during gestation. Despite this investment in birth weight, a known survival indicator, total pre-weaning male mortality was statistically significantly higher than female mortality (12% vs. 7% respectively z = 2.06 P = 0.040). Males tended to suffer from crushing by the sow more than females and statistically significantly more males died from disease-related causes. Although males were born on average heavier, with higher body mass index and ponderal index, these differences were not sustained. In addition male piglets showed impaired thermoregulation compared to females. These results suggest male-biased mortality exists despite greater initial maternal investment, and therefore reflects the greater susceptibility of this sex to causal mortality factors. Life history strategies are being displayed by a domestic population of pigs with sows in this study displaying a form of parental optimism by allocating greater resources at birth to males and providing an over-supply of this more vulnerable sex in expectation of sex-biased mortality.
The objective assessment of affective (emotional) state in farm livestock, especially positive states, poses a significant challenge. In human psychology, there is evidence that affective state can ...alter cognition, with more positive states being associated with an increased likelihood of judging ambiguous information postively (a phenomenon described as optimistic cognitive bias). The aim of this study was to investigate whether judgement biases could be used to assess affective states in pigs housed in environments with different levels of enrichment. Two groups of five gilts were housed in either enriched (E) or barren (B) environments for the first five weeks of the experiment. The enriched group had more space, straw and objects to manipulate. The pigs were trained on a go/no-go task to discriminate two auditory cues, a positive cue that predicted a food reward if the pig approached a hatch, and a negative cue that predicted a mildly aversive experience if the pig approached the same hatch. The quality of the pigs’ environment was then changed over time in a balanced, cross-over design (either EBE or BEB). Tests of cognitive bias were made on individual pigs before and after each change in environment using an unreinforced, ambiguous, auditory cue different from either the positive or the negative cue. In test sessions, positive, negative and amibiguous cues were presented in a randomised sequence, and the pigs’ responses (whether they approached the hatch and latency to approach) were recorded. Both groups were more likely to approach the hatch and were faster to approach the hatch in response to the ambiguous cue when currently housed in the enriched environment. There was also an interaction between current and past environment, whereby pigs that started in the enriched environment were subsequently less likely and slower to approach the hatch when moved to a barren environment than pigs intially housed in the barren environment. These results show that pigs have more optimistic judgement biases in enriched environments indicative of a more positive affective state. Also, pigs that have spent time in an enriched environment react more negatively to being subsequently housed in a barren environment. We conclude that cognitive bias has potential to provide additional information about the effect of various management regimes on farmed animals’ welfare. This will be increasingly important for identifying practices to promote positive affective states in our food producing animals.
•Automatic mounting events detection among pigs is presented.•Ellipse fitting algorithms were used to localize each pig in the image.•The Euclidean distances between head, tail and sides of pigs were ...obtained.•Major and minor axis lengths were altered during mounting events.
Excessive mounting behaviours amongst pigs cause a high risk of poor welfare, arising from skin lesions, lameness and stress, and economic losses from reduced performance. The aim of this study was to develop a method for automatic detection of mounting events amongst pigs under commercial farm conditions by means of image processing. Two pens were selected for the study and were monitored for 20days by means of top view cameras. The recorded video was then visually analysed for selecting mounting behaviours, and extracted images from the video files were subsequently used for image processing. An ellipse fitting technique was applied to localize pigs in the image. The intersection points between the major and minor axis of each fitted ellipse and the ellipse shape were used for defining the head, tail and sides of each pig. The Euclidean distances between head and tail, head and sides, the major and minor axis length of the fitted ellipse during the mounting were utilized for development of an algorithm to automatically identify a mounting event. The proposed method could detect mounting events with high level of sensitivity, specificity and accuracy, 94.5%, 88.6% and 92.7%, respectively. The results show that it is possible to use machine vision techniques in order to automatically detect mounting behaviours among pigs under commercial farm conditions.
In polytocous livestock species, litter size and offspring weight act antagonistically; in modern pig breeds, selection for increased litter size has resulted in lower mean birth weights, an ...increased number of small piglets and an increased number of those affected by varying degrees of intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR). IUGR poses life-long challenges, both mental, with morphological brain changes and altered cognition, and physical, such as immaturity of organs, reduced colostrum intake and weight gain. In pigs, head morphology of newborn piglets is a good phenotypic marker for identifying such compromised piglets. Growth retardation could be considered as a property of the dam, in part due to either uterine capacity or insufficiency. A novel approach to this issue is to consider the proportion of IUGR-affected piglets in a litter as an indirect measure of uterine capacity. However, uterine capacity or sufficiency cannot be equated solely to litter size and thus is a trait difficult to measure on farm.
A total of 21,159 Landrace × Large White or Landrace × White Duroc piglets (born over 52 weeks) with recorded head morphology and birth weights were followed from birth until death or weaning. At the piglet level, the estimated heritability for IUGR (as defined by head morphology) was low at 0.01 ± 0.01. Piglet direct genetic effects of birth weight (h
= 0.07 ± 0.02) were strongly negatively correlated with head morphology (- 0.93), in that IUGR-affected piglets tended to have lower birth weights. At the sow level, analysis of the proportion of IUGR-affected piglets in a litter gave a heritability of 0.20 ± 0.06, with high and negative genetic correlations of the proportion of IUGR-affected piglets with average offspring birth weight (- 0.90) and with the proportion of piglets surviving until 24 h (- 0.80).
This suggests that the proportion of IUGR-affected piglets in a litter is a suitable indirect measure of uterine capacity for inclusion in breeding programmes that aim at reducing IUGR in piglets and improving piglet survival.
Posture detection targeted towards providing assessments for the monitoring of health and welfare of pigs has been of great interest to researchers from different disciplines. Existing studies ...applying machine vision techniques are mostly based on methods using three-dimensional imaging systems, or two-dimensional systems with the limitation of monitoring under controlled conditions. Thus, the main goal of this study was to determine whether a two-dimensional imaging system, along with deep learning approaches, could be utilized to detect the standing and lying (belly and side) postures of pigs under commercial farm conditions. Three deep learning-based detector methods, including faster regions with convolutional neural network features (Faster R-CNN), single shot multibox detector (SSD) and region-based fully convolutional network (R-FCN), combined with Inception V2, Residual Network (ResNet) and Inception ResNet V2 feature extractions of RGB images were proposed. Data from different commercial farms were used for training and validation of the proposed models. The experimental results demonstrated that the R-FCN ResNet101 method was able to detect lying and standing postures with higher average precision (AP) of 0.93, 0.95 and 0.92 for standing, lying on side and lying on belly postures, respectively and mean average precision (mAP) of more than 0.93.
Background
The axolotl is a key model to study appendicular regeneration. The limb complexity resembles that of humans in structure and tissue components; however, axolotl limbs develop ...postembryonically. In this work, we evaluated the postembryonic development of the appendicular skeleton and its changes with aging.
Results
The juvenile limb skeleton is formed mostly by Sox9/Col1a2 cartilage cells. Ossification of the appendicular skeleton starts when animals reach a length of 10 cm, and cartilage cells are replaced by a primary ossification center, consisting of cortical bone and an adipocyte‐filled marrow cavity. Vascularization is associated with the ossification center and the marrow cavity formation. We identified the contribution of Col1a2‐descendants to bone and adipocytes. Moreover, ossification progresses with age toward the epiphyses of long bones. Axolotls are neotenic salamanders, and still ossification remains responsive to l‐thyroxine, increasing the rate of bone formation.
Conclusions
In axolotls, bone maturation is a continuous process that extends throughout their life. Ossification of the appendicular bones is slow and continues until the complete element is ossified. The cellular components of the appendicular skeleton change accordingly during ossification, creating a heterogenous landscape in each element. The continuous maturation of the bone is accompanied by a continuous body growth.
Key Findings
The juvenile appendicular skeleton is formed mostly by Sox9/Col1a2 cartilage cells, transitioning to a slow and life‐long ossification that starts around sexual maturation.
Axolotl growth is biphasic, defined by an explosive growth of axolotls in approximately the first 20 months of their life, after which growth velocity dramatically diminishes, however never reaching zero.
A hybrid population of hypertrophic chondrocytes, expressing the chondrogenic marker SOX9 and the osteoblast marker OCN, resides next to the ossification center.
Col1a2‐descendants contribute to bone and adipocytes during ossification.
•A machine vision approach was used for detection of lying position of pigs.•An ellipse fitting technique was applied to localize each pig in images.•The lying patterns of pigs in enriched and barren ...pens were compared.•Rooting material provision significantly changed the diurnal activity pattern and lying location.
Visual monitoring of pig behaviours over long periods is very time consuming and has possibility for observer bias. Automated image processing techniques now give the potential to carry out behavioural research in a more effective way. To illustrate this, an image processing technique was applied to identify whether any changes in pig lying behaviour which might be detrimental to welfare resulted from an enrichment provision treatment. The lying patterns of pigs in 6 enriched pens were compared with those of 6 control pens, which had only a suspended enrichment toy, to determine whether daily provision of a rooting material (maize silage) onto a solid plate in the lying area of a fully slatted pen resulted in changed lying time and location. Pigs were monitored by top view CCTV cameras and animals were extracted from their background using image processing algorithms. An ellipse fitting technique was applied to localize each pig and the centre of each fitted ellipse was used in x–y coordinates to find the lying positions after use of an algorithm to remove images in motion preceding the scan. Each pen was virtually subdivided into four zones and the position of each lying pig obtained at 10min intervals over a series of 24h periods. Results of a validation study showed that the image processing technique had an accuracy of 93–95% when compared to visual scoring. Results from image processing indicated that once daily provision of rooting material significantly changed the diurnal activity pattern (p<0.001) and resulted in a modified diurnal pattern of resting location. The study demonstrates that machine vision can be used as a precise and rapid method for quantifying pig lying behaviour for research or practical applications.
Purpose
There is increasing public concern over standards of farm animal welfare, yet the majority of sustainability studies of livestock have thus far focused only on environmental performance and ...profitability. Where social analysis has been carried out, there has yet to be a consistent methodology developed that incorporates animal welfare into social life cycle assessment (S-LCA). A framework was developed to assess animal welfare, using conventional broiler chicken meat production in Europe as a case in point.
Methods
Data were collected on stocking density, mortality, and carcass condemnation rate from conventional chicken meat production systems in Europe. The quantitative risk of each welfare indicator was characterised in accordance with the Social Hotspots Database methodology based on best to worst farm performances, i.e. quartiles of the data collected for each indicator. The overall animal welfare impact was assessed using a weighted sum methodology, which accounted for the level of risk animals were exposed to for each indicator and the animal lifespan. From this, a Social Hotspot Index (SHI) could be calculated for the animal welfare impact associated with the functional unit, which was 1 kg of chicken meat production. The animal welfare impact of four European countries was then compared.
Results and discussion
The countries assessed displayed a range of values for overall animal welfare impact; the country with the best animal welfare had a SHI for animal welfare impact of 0.14, whilst the worst had a SHI for animal welfare impact of 0.72. Farms that kept more birds per building had an increased overall animal welfare impact. Animal welfare, determined by negative welfare indicators, was worse in more recently established farm buildings due to increased flock size.
Conclusions
A methodology that incorporates animal welfare indicators into S-LCA was developed that is both scalable and related to welfare assessment frameworks. Although only some specific negative welfare indicators were considered here, the methodology could easily accommodate additional negative indicators and even positive welfare indicators as advancements are made in the understanding of animal welfare. Hence, this study provides a springboard for further development of S-LCA, animal welfare assessment and, ultimately, improved animal welfare in livestock systems.
Tail-biting: A new perspective Taylor, Nina R.; Main, David C.J.; Mendl, Mike ...
The veterinary journal (1997),
11/2010, Letnik:
186, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Tail-biting data from different studies are difficult to compare because a range of definitions of tail-biting behaviour and tail-biting lesions are used. Although records from abattoirs provide a ...large database, their usefulness is restricted as tail-biting is under-recorded and environmental and husbandry factors associated with the behaviour are unlikely to be known. Both farm and abattoir data provide no information on the number of pigs biting, only those bitten. Studying individual animals that tail-bite should give a better understanding of the pig’s motivation to tail-bite and which of the components of its environment should be adjusted to improve welfare.
This review examines the existing literature on tail-biting in pigs but considered from a new perspective using three different descriptive behavioural types, namely, ‘two-stage’, ‘sudden-forceful’ and ‘obsessive’, each of which may have different motivational bases. The article also considers the different environmental and husbandry factors which may affect each type of behaviour and discusses why this is such a complicated field and why it is often difficult to draw conclusions from available research.
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