Objectives: To determine if nursery pigs display different behaviors and postures pre- and post injection during the human-approach paradigm using a digital photographic image. Materials and methods: A digital camera captured an image of nursery pigs in a pen during a human-approach paradigm at two time points, pre- and post injection, with three different treatments. A total of 149 pens containing crossbred, mixed-sexed nursery pigs 42 days of age were used. Each pen of pigs was randomly assigned to one of three injection treatments: Vaccine A (saline administered on day 28 and Vaccine A on day 43); Vaccine B (vaccine administered days 28 and 43); and saline (VSAL; saline administered on days 28 and 43). All pigs were classified as Touched, Oriented, or Not Oriented. Pigs classified as Not-Oriented were further delineated into four postures and two behaviors. Within behavioral categories, snout and tail-base distances from the human were measured. Results: There were no pre-injection pen behavioral differences. Fewer Vaccine B-treated pens were classified as Touched compared to Vaccine A- and VSAL-treated pens. Regardless of treatment, more pigs were Not Oriented post injection than pre-injection. Fewer Vaccine B-treated pigs stood than did other treatments. Vaccine B-treated pigs had the greatest snout and tail-base distances from the human. Implication: It is important to establish the age of the nursery pigs and the vaccine with which they are treated when conducting an on-farm assessment using a human-approach paradigm.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/anna_butters-johnson/304/
This article is published as Weimer, Shawna L., Thomas J. Fangman, Locke A. Karriker, Kenneth J. Stalder, and Anna K. Johnson. "Nursery pig behavior evaluation pre-and post injection using digital-image methodology." Journal of Swine Health and Production 26, no. 1 (2018): 25-33. Posted with permission.