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Establishing Trailer Ventilation (Boarding) Requirements for Finishing Pigs during Transport
Animals
  • John J. McGlone, Texas Tech University
  • Avi Sapkota, Texas Tech University
  • Anna K. Johnson, Iowa State University
  • Rebecca K. Kephart, Iowa State University
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
8-1-2014
DOI
10.3390/ani4030515
Abstract

Specifically, this study aimed to establish the effects on mortality and morbidity of boarding levels (amount of side-wall trailer ventilation) for finishing pigs in mild weather (8.80 ± 0.30 °C, 71.70% ± 1.12% humidity). Pigs from commercial finishing sites were transported in 302 pot-bellied trailers to commercial processing plants. Measures collected at the processing plant were rates of dead on arrival (DOA), non-ambulatory, non-injured (NANI), non-ambulatory, injured (NAI), and total dead and down (D&D). Boarding levels (% that side walls were closed off with inserted boards) were divided into 3 bins: low, medium, and high, and outside temperature was divided into 4 bins <5 °C, 5.10–10 °C, and 10.10–15 °C and >15 °C. Average rates of DOA, NANI, NAI, and D&D were approximately 0.30%, 0.12%, 0.04%, and 0.46%, respectively. The D&D was highest when boarding level was low with temperatures <5 °C (p < 0.05). However, variations in boarding level (medium and high boarding) in the temperature range of 5.10 °C to 23.30 °C did not affect pig losses.

Comments

This article is from Animals 4 (2014): 515, doi:10.3390/ani4030515. Posted with permission.

Rights
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Copyright Owner
John McGlone, et al
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Citation Information
John J. McGlone, Avi Sapkota, Anna K. Johnson and Rebecca K. Kephart. "Establishing Trailer Ventilation (Boarding) Requirements for Finishing Pigs during Transport" Animals Vol. 4 Iss. 3 (2014) p. 515 - 523
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/anna_butters-johnson/57/