The effect of flooring upon pigs reared in an otherwise cold environment

Abstract

1. Piglets reared in a cold building but in pens provided with electrically warmed or wooden beds weighed considerably more at 8 weeks old than piglets reared in pens with solid concrete floors covered with thin permeable cork-tar bricks. At 3 days and 3 weeks old there were no differences in live weight between the three groups.2. Before weaning at 8 weeks old the piglets reared on concrete floors had very much poorer appetites for solid food than had those from the other two groups.3. Although the blood haemoglobin concentrations of piglets on warmed and wooden floors rose between 3 and 8 weeks of age, the haemoglobin concentrations in the group on concrete floors fell. The differences in concentrations between groups at weaning just failed to be statistically significant at P = 0·05.4. Under the conditions of this experiment the provision of electrically warmed or wooden floors diminished but did not eliminate the incidence of a pathological liver condition in pigs which has been attributed to poor housing conditions.5. The low weaning weights, poor appetites, low haemoglobin concentrations at weaning and the presence of the liver disease in piglets born on concrete floors were probably interdependent, but the mechanism and direction of this interdependence could not be explained from the data collected.