Effects oh housing typologies on the welfare of growing – finishing pigs

The Department of Agricultural and Forestry Engineering of the University of Florence is carrying out research to determine the housing solutions more suitable for traditional Italian swine production. In Italy hogs are slaughtered at a weight of 150 - 160 kg and are destined to precious productions, such as Parma or San Daniele Ham. The study shows a comparison among the behavior of growing hogs, housed in different situations. Basically 3 different housing typologies are compared: A) pen with totally slatted flooring; B) pen with concrete flooring and outside dunging passage; C) pen with bedding and sloped flooring. The main goal is to evaluate the behavior of growing hogs (25-60 kg), housed in the 3 different systems, in order to estimate the animal welfare and define the parameters for an appropriate design of the production system. The survey of the animal behavior has been executed by means of closed circuit television cameras and time-lapse recorders. Furthermore information on thermal environment, productive performances and animal health-conditions have been collected. On the basis of the experimental results a higher animal welfare has been found in straw-flow pens. This conclusion is supported by the particularly high total lying time (84.1%), by the time dedicated to a deep sleep (56.6%), by the intensive activity of exploring the environment and locomotion (the average daily walk of a pig is 1,229 m). In the final part, some proposals for pens with bedding and sloped flooring are shown. These solutions are designed specifically for Italian hogs, which can reach the high slaughtering weight only with a restricted feeding based on liquid feed distribution systems.