Resilience is a key characteristic for pigs to reach their production potential under commercial conditions. Advanced nutritional strategies could play a role in supporting resilience in pigs and new technologies are paving the way to better monitor improvements in resilience. In the future this could help to demonstrate how optimizing nutrition for resilience can have further benefits for pig welfare and farm economics.
The need for enhanced resilience
Studies have shown that pigs within a commercial grow-finish environment only achieve 70% of their growth potential compared to pigs reared in a less challenging research environment. However, there are indications that this 30% gap in performance can be closed by increasing the capacity of pigs to cope and recover quickly from stressors. In other words, breeding and managing for resilience in pigs could increase the potential for greater performance under commercial conditions than what is currently achieved. Furthermore, the potential benefits for animal welfare and farm economics are not to be neglected.
Resilience in livestock refers to the ability of animals to be minimally affected by stressors and quickly return to their optimal production level.
Several disciplines in pig production, including genetics, veterinary sciences and nutrition are striving to find ways to positively influence resilience in pigs. There are two reasons for that:
On the one hand, developments such as the need to reduce the use of antibiotics, climate change, animal welfare concerns and a shortage in farm labour are increasing the need for resilient farm animals.
On the other hand, continuous breeding for improved animal performance has been shown to reduce the resilience of farm animals
Consequences of resilience for animal welfare
Short-term challenges to the pig can reduce its welfare. Therefore, managing and breeding the pig for improved adaptability and for resilience will contribute to higher welfare outcomes. However, as Grosse and Mueller (2018) and others warn, it should not be seen as a substitute for good housing and good management practices in farm animal production systems.
Economic value of resilience
Researchers suggest that the economic value of resilience can be based on labour costs associated with observing animals that show signs of disease or other problems. A reduction in time spent on an animal with an alert will reduce costs associated with labour. These could...
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