stress

To manage stress in our relationship with our livestock we must first learn to see it.  We know that pigs grow best if they are not moved any more than necessary, even from building to building, much less from farm to farm, or country to country.  This seems to be especially a problem for very young pigs.  The take home here would be that if we can engineer our facilities so that it is possible to move the sow from the pigs at weaning rather than moving the pigs from the sows, we will lower the level of stress, increase our level of satisfaction and improve income.  Our modern systems move the sow and the pigs both, and at far too young an age for the piglet.

This understanding comes pretty naturally from the insight that pigs are not, like cattle, herd animals.  Herd animals are drifters of a sort.  Pigs prefer a loose social group more or less corresponding to a family.  They have a home and they would like to be in it.  It stresses them when they are not.  We Americans could learn from the pigs.