A note on the effect of individual penning on the performance of fattening pigs

Abstract

ABSTRACTIndividual and group-penning, and entire male and female sexes were investigated in a factorial design. The size of group was five pigs. The diets were given to a scale based on live weight.Individual penning gave significantly faster gains than group penning (679 v. 653 g/day, P < 0·01) but the improvement in food conversion ratio was not significant. Loin sample joints from individually-penned pigs had less lean and significantly more fat than did those from group-penned pigs. The faster growth rate and greater fatness of the individually-penned pigs indicated that more energy was retained by these animals and it was concluded that the greater retention of energy derived primarily from an apparently reduced metabolic heat production. The associated increase in initial growth rate was accentuated by the nature of the feeding scale.There was some indication that boars did not grow as well as gilts in individual pens. Boars grew faster than gilts and converted food more efficiently to live-weight gain especially above 50 kg. They had lower killing-out yields and less fat than gilts.