Pig behavior and feeding management

Animal behavior is an adaptive response to certain stimuli and the external environment. Different animals, different individuals of the same animal, and different growth periods of the same individual have different behavioral responses. It is this reaction that enables animals to survive, grow, and reproduce in adversity.

Like other animals, pigs respond to their living environment, climate conditions, and feeding and management. They all have their own special behaviors and regularities. With the development and reform of pig production, people pay more attention to the study of behavioral patterns and mechanisms of pigs, and summarise the methods of training for use in production practice. Especially the modern intensive pig raising, full house feeding, high density, mechanization, and professional flow production are highly efficient, which hinders the pig's normal behavior to varying degrees. This contradiction between the human environment and the behavior of pigs can only start from the adaptive response of pigs, emphasize teaching, and give full play to the aftereffect behaviors, so that it can meet the needs of modern pig production.

Eating behavior

The feeding behavior of pigs includes: feeding and drinking.

The genetic characteristics of grazing soil are the most important features. The nose of the pig is highly developed. Even with modern grazing and feeding on a well-balanced diet, the pigs still have the characteristics of grazing: trying to occupy a favorable position during feeding, and sometimes the forelimbs break into the troughs and spill the feed. Pigs are competitive in their food intake and love to feed on food. Group-fed pigs eat more, eat faster, and grow faster than single-fed pigs.

Pigs like to eat sweets. Including unbreasted piglets, they love sweets.

The ratio of granular material to powdered material is similar to that of pigs, pigs prefer to eat pellets; dry material to wet material ratio, pigs prefer to eat wet material, and it takes less time.

Under Natural conditions, the pigs consumed 6 to 8 times during the day and 3 to 5 times during the night. Each feed lasted for about 10 minutes to 20 minutes. When the food was limited to less than 10 minutes, the time for free feeding was. Long and can see the personality characteristics of each pig. There are differences in the number of times of milking and milking of suckling pigs due to age, about 15 to 25 times. Feed intake and frequency of feeding for large pigs increase with body weight.

Drinking water is generally carried out at the same time as eating. The pigs drink a lot of water. When they eat dry food, they drink twice as much as dry food. Adult pigs drink water and have a lot to do with the temperature of the environment. Immediately after eating dry food, drink water, about 9 times/day~10 times/day. It takes 2 to 3 times to eat wet material. When eating freely, food and water are alternated. When food is restricted, water is consumed after eating. Piglets before 2 months of age can generally learn to use automatic drinkers.

Excretion behavior

Genetic characteristics pigs do not live in places where they eat and feces, the pig's ancestors --- wild boar excrement is not in the nest to prevent the detection of the enemy beast. Pigs are the favorite animals for cleanliness under well-managed excretion conditions. Keep the bed clean and drained at a fixed distance from the bed. In general, pigs do not excrete during feeding. They begin 5 minutes after satiety and defecate once or twice. Most of them are first defecate and they urinate afterwards. Two feedings of multiple micturitions in the middle and less defecation, excretion in the night 2 to 3 times, the highest excretion after early morning and early morning meals.

The genetic characteristics of social behavior are the survival needs, wild boar gregariousness, and the overall social characteristics of peers and foraging pigs.

The social characteristics of the group: the pigs have a distinct grade, and soon after the birth of a litter of piglets, a generally strong piglet will receive preferential feeding and eating rights. After the different litter pigs were merged together, they were soon struggling to form strong and weak rank orders. In general, piglets with large body weight and strong temperament occupy dominant positions, and the dominant position of the elderly is younger than that of the young, and the male and female are dominant, and the castration does not have the superiority over the castration. The rank order is linear, and this relationship is particularly prominent when food is restricted.

Normal feeding, the pigs spread out for food, live in peace, and get together when they are frightened.

Battle behaviors include: offensive, defensive, evasive, and defensive.

Genetic characteristics between the same group or different groups of pigs for competition for food, as well as structural adjustments in the same group of pigs will be a brutal fight.

Fighting characteristics The fighting behavior of modern pigs is mostly affected by the breeding density. When the herd density is too large and the unit space per pig is decreased, the fighting behaviors in feed intake and games will increase significantly. One is to bite the head and the other is to bite the tail. It will cause a drop in weight gain and a huge feed waste.

When two litter pigs merge and a strange pig enters a group of pigs, they are generally severely attacked, ranging from 1 week to 2 weeks, and the growth can be as long as one month to two months, and some even become stiff pigs. It can cause death.

In the hot summer days, the two strange boars will collapse due to intense fighting and can cause one or both to die.

Sexual behaviors of sexual behavior include: estrus, courtship and mating.

The genetic characteristics of pigs in the food chain below, often affected by the enemy beasts, for the race to reproduce, the formation of early sexual maturity, more calving characteristics.

Characteristics of sexual behavior When wild boar estrus occurs, male and female pigs will exhibit their own pre-mating behavior. Sister estrus: restless, appetite high and low, and rhythmic, soft buzzing, climbing across other sows and actively approaching the boar, when the management press on their backs, immediately appeared unique mating reflection. However, some sows have obvious spousal selectivity and are particularly averse to individual boars. When the boar is excited, he actively touches and chases the sow, sniffs the side of the body, vulva, arches his buttocks, and sends out a continuous, rhythmic, soft buzzing sound (someone calls it the song of courtship). However, boars have low sexual desire due to poor nutrition and exercise.

The maternal behavior of the maternal behavioral pigs is represented by a series of behaviors before and after delivery, such as flocculation, lactation and tending of piglets.

Genetic features: In order to ensure the breeding of the race, the sows will try their best to rear the piglets to ensure their survival. When the piglets are threatened, the sows will show special courage and sacrifice spirit.

Maternal characteristics of childbirth: close to childbirth, sows are usually expressed in the form of straw nest, even if it is a hard ground, will also use claws to grasp the ground. Twenty-four hours before delivery, the sow is mentally restless, frequently urinates, grittes, bite tails, arches, and lies horizontally. Side-to-side childbirth, the time is generally quieter after 4 pm, and there is more litter at night. When the first piglet is released, the sow will scream.

Breastfeeding: The sow is in a state of putting milk throughout the delivery process. When the piglet feeds, the sow will do its best to show the nipple so that the piglets can feed. Extensive exposure to the breast forms a heat source that lures the pig to lie down under a warm breast. When breastfeeding, it is generally on the side and does not change posture midway. Both mothers and children can actively initiate breastfeeding behaviors, such as crowing and crowding. The sow will choose a safe place against the wall and use the mouth to open the pig and slowly lie down. So as not to crush the piglet, if once pressed, the sow will immediately stand up and do it again to ensure that the piglet will not be crushed.

Recognizing that the mother and child communicate with each other through the sense of smell, hearing and vision, the sow confirms the piglet, the piglet confirms the sow and the fixed teat, and it is accurate. Even in a very complicated situation, it will not be mistaken.

Hu Zi: In the face of foreign invasion, the sow will give a buzzing warning. At this time, the piglets will not move or hear the sound of fleeing. Sows will open two jaws to threaten the inmates, and even attack.

Activity and sleep behavior Genetic features Live feeding during the day; only in the warm season and summer, there is a little foraging activity at night.

Characteristics of activities The main activities are during the daytime due to differences in the pig's age and production characteristics. The rest time for piglets is 60% to 70% for day and night, 70% for breeding pigs, 80% to 85% for sows, and 70% for finishing pigs. 85% rest peak in the middle of the night and at least in the early morning.

Nursing sows: With the increase of the number of days of nursing, the sleeping time gradually decreases, and the number of walkings varies from less to more, from short to long. There are two ways to rest, one is lying and lying, many lying on the side lying, breathing light and uniform, although the eye is closed but easy to wake up; the second is to sleep, then deep breathing, there is buzzing, there are fur shake, not easy to wake up.

Piglets: In the three days after birth, except for sucking and excretion, almost all of them went to sleep. With the increase of age, the sleep gradually decreased, but after 40 days of heavy feeding, sleep increased slightly. The conditions are appropriate, and after a full meal and a full drink, they will generally rest quietly.

Exploring behavioral inquiry behaviors includes: probing activities and experiencing behaviors.

Hereditary characteristics are ethnic reproduction, and pigs have a strong ability to detect the environment and find and identify food.

Characteristics of inquiry The behavior of pigs is mostly towards the ground. They are explored through the senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, licking, and arching. In particular, the young piglets showed great curiosity about all the new things around them. They used nose arches and mouth bites to explore all the new things in the surrounding environment. The exploration time was longer than the group's playing time. When a pig feeds on food, it first has an arch excavation movement. Through smelling, arching, licking, and licking, the pig feels that it meets the taste and confirms that the environment is safe without risk. For example, suckling pigs treat suckling pigs that are tempted. When they start feeding at 7 days of age, the suckling pigs generally do not feed, they only arch, smell, and lick and try to make contact, especially on the first day. Up to 6 to 12 times, it usually takes 2 days to 4 days, or even a small amount of food for a week.

Sleeping, feeding, and excretion are distinctly different in the pens, and they are formed by smelling different odors.

Abnormal behavior Abnormal behavior includes: fighting, noisy, bite, tail, and other outrageous acts.

There is no theoretical or practical basis for the heritability of genetic characteristics.

The characteristics of abnormal behavior are mostly related to harmful stimuli in the environment. For example, long-term circumcision sows will stubbornly bite the iron nipples of automatic drinkers; monotonous, boring, and narrow spaces will allow sows to constantly bite the columns. As breeding density increases, so does aggressiveness. Some neurotic sows have postpartum feasts. The biting of tails caused by Nutritional deficiencies and environmental congestion can be extremely harmful to production.

Aftereffect behavior Aftereffect behavior is a conditional reflexive behavior of the pig to identify things and listen to people's commands after birth, which is quite different from congenital foraging, breastfeeding and sexual behavior.

After-effect behavior characteristics: pigs are familiar with new things after birth to establish a more fixed understanding of the memory of eating and drinking is very strong, can accurately remember the position of the sleeping quarters, troughs, water, excretion points, and regular feeding Material, water supply flutes, ring tones, tapping sounds. In general, through training, pigs can establish good post-effect behavior and achieve the purpose of improving production efficiency.

Summary Understanding the top ten behavioral characteristics of pigs should go with the flow of nature and do a good job in both areas in order to increase the efficiency of pig raising. First, on the rearing conditions, it is necessary to formulate reasonable feeding techniques, design new types of barns and equipment that meet the physiological characteristics of pigs, effectively control the environment, maximize the physiological habits of pigs, and increase production efficiency. The second is to strengthen the training of after-effect behaviors and establish effective conditional reflexes so that pigs can develop good living habits from an early age and give full play to their productive potential, achieving the goals of high fecundity, more meat production, less consumption, and higher efficiency.

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