Frequency of ear lesions in weaner pigs under consideration of different influencing factors

摘要

In studies on 2566 piglets in the rearing unit of a piglet production farm, a weekly investigation and an individual assessment of the occurrence of injuries, necrosis and partial losses of the ears and the tail took place according to the Germany-wide pig-scoring-key (DSBS) between weaning (age: 4 weeks) and sale (age: 10 weeks). There were only 1.6 % weaner pigs with ear necrosis, more common were ear injuries (20.7 %), mostly due to agonistic interactions. In 17 animals (= 0.7 %) partial ear losses were diagnosed. In not tail docked weanlings (n = 1376), significantly lower ear injury rates occurred (14.9 % injuries, 0.5 % partial losses), but significantly higher tail losses (46.7 % partial, 1.9 % total loss) than in tail docked weaner pigs (n = 1190) (27.4 % injuries, 0.8 % partial ear loss, 1.4 % partial, 0.6 % total tail loss). Between the rounds, highly significant differences between 8.0 and 44.4 % injuries and between 0 and 0.5 % partial ear losses were diagnosed. There were no differences in the incidence of ear injuries between female and castrated male pigs, offspring of gilts and sows, offspring of different sow genotypes (Landrace, German Large White and hybrids of both), pigs fed with or without pellets (hay, straw or hop pellets) as a supplement to ration and animals in different group sizes. While there were no differences in the not tail docked pigs between weanlings housed as littermates in one pen together or mixed piglets (15.8 and 14.4 % ear injuries, 0.2 and 0.7 % partial ear losses, respectively), 30.8 % ear injuries and 1.1 % partial losses of ears were observed in tail-docked littermates and 23.8 % injuries and 0.5 % partial ear losses in tail-docked weaners mixed from different litters at weaning (p 0.05).