Research Article | OPEN ACCESS
Separate Effect of a Small Quantity of Straw Provided Daily on Cortisol, GH and Performance of Growing Pigs
1Guoan Yin, 2Honggui Liu, 2Xiang Li and 1Jun Bao
1College of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, Heilongjiang Bayi Agricultural University, Daqing 163319, China
2College of Animal Science and Technology, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 165000, China
Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology 2013 18:4536-4539
Received: October 17, 2012 | Accepted: December 17, 2012 | Published: May 05, 2013
Abstract
In this experiment, 156 piglets (female) at 74-78 days of age were selected from the same environment, and randomly moved to the concrete pen with or without straw (so called Straw pen or Barren pen) after weighed. After a week’s pre-experiment, there was an eight-week experiment. Feed intake and weight gain were recorded. Three piglets per litter were randomly selected to measure cortisol and GH before and after the experiment. Results showed that, straw can lower cortisol concentration, but GH, feed intake, weight gain and feed/gain ratio did not significantly differ between treatments. So a small quantity of straw refreshed daily that reduced stress and had no negative impact on performance is an inexpensive way to improve growing pig’s welfare.
Keywords:
Cortisol, Growing pig, GH, performance, straw,
Competing interests
The authors have no competing interests.
Open Access Policy
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Copyright
The authors have no competing interests.
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ISSN (Online): 2040-7467
ISSN (Print): 2040-7459 |
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