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Surgical castration with pain relief affects the health and productive performance of pigs in the suckling period

BACKGROUND: Surgical castration is still practiced in many EU countries to avoid undesirable aggressive behavior and boar taint in male pigs. However, evidence shows that castration is painful and has a detrimental influence on pig health. This study investigated the clinical and productive effects...

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Autores principales: Morales, Joaquin, Dereu, Andre, Manso, Alberto, de Frutos, Laura, Piñeiro, Carlos, Manzanilla, Edgar G., Wuyts, Niels
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5585944/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28879020
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40813-017-0066-1
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author Morales, Joaquin
Dereu, Andre
Manso, Alberto
de Frutos, Laura
Piñeiro, Carlos
Manzanilla, Edgar G.
Wuyts, Niels
author_facet Morales, Joaquin
Dereu, Andre
Manso, Alberto
de Frutos, Laura
Piñeiro, Carlos
Manzanilla, Edgar G.
Wuyts, Niels
author_sort Morales, Joaquin
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Surgical castration is still practiced in many EU countries to avoid undesirable aggressive behavior and boar taint in male pigs. However, evidence shows that castration is painful and has a detrimental influence on pig health. This study investigated the clinical and productive effects of surgical castration in the suckling period. A total of 3696 male pigs, 3 to 6 days old, comprising of 721 litters from two different farms were included in the study. Within each litter, half of the males were kept as intact males (IM) and half were surgically castrated (CM). Surgical castration was conducted by a trained farmer. Average daily gain (ADG), body weight at weaning (BWW), percentage of pre-weaning mortality (PWM) and antibiotic usage were measured. Pig major acute phase protein (PigMAP) serum concentrations were analyzed prior to castration, and on days 1 and 10 after castration. Productive performance data were analyzed using a linear mixed model. Mortality and percentage of pigs treated with antibiotics were analyzed using the Fisher’s exact test. RESULTS: No overall differences in BWW and ADG were observed between the two groups. However, differences were observed when the same effects were analyzed in the 25% lightest, 50% medium and 25% heaviest pigs at birth. PWM was higher in CM than in IM groups (6.3% vs 3.6%; p < 0.001), especially in the light (12.2% vs 6.2%; p = 0.02) and in the medium (5.5% vs 2.7%; p = 0.04) weight groups. In the heaviest pigs group PWM was not affected by castration, but IM tended to show higher ADG (p = 0.06) and showed higher BWW (8.0 kg vs 7.8 kg; p = 0.05) than CM. There were no differences in percentage of pigs treated with antibiotics between the two groups (5.8% vs 5.8%; p = 0.98) in this study. Furthermore, PigMAP was increased in CM the day after castration (0.944 mg/ml vs 0.847 mg/ml; p = 0.025), but there was no difference between CM and IM groups at day 10. CONCLUSIONS: Surgical castration has a negative impact on production in the suckling period because it causes an increase in PWM, especially in pigs in the three lower quartiles for body weight, and negatively affects the BWW in pigs born in the highest quartile for body weight.
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spelling pubmed-55859442017-09-06 Surgical castration with pain relief affects the health and productive performance of pigs in the suckling period Morales, Joaquin Dereu, Andre Manso, Alberto de Frutos, Laura Piñeiro, Carlos Manzanilla, Edgar G. Wuyts, Niels Porcine Health Manag Research BACKGROUND: Surgical castration is still practiced in many EU countries to avoid undesirable aggressive behavior and boar taint in male pigs. However, evidence shows that castration is painful and has a detrimental influence on pig health. This study investigated the clinical and productive effects of surgical castration in the suckling period. A total of 3696 male pigs, 3 to 6 days old, comprising of 721 litters from two different farms were included in the study. Within each litter, half of the males were kept as intact males (IM) and half were surgically castrated (CM). Surgical castration was conducted by a trained farmer. Average daily gain (ADG), body weight at weaning (BWW), percentage of pre-weaning mortality (PWM) and antibiotic usage were measured. Pig major acute phase protein (PigMAP) serum concentrations were analyzed prior to castration, and on days 1 and 10 after castration. Productive performance data were analyzed using a linear mixed model. Mortality and percentage of pigs treated with antibiotics were analyzed using the Fisher’s exact test. RESULTS: No overall differences in BWW and ADG were observed between the two groups. However, differences were observed when the same effects were analyzed in the 25% lightest, 50% medium and 25% heaviest pigs at birth. PWM was higher in CM than in IM groups (6.3% vs 3.6%; p < 0.001), especially in the light (12.2% vs 6.2%; p = 0.02) and in the medium (5.5% vs 2.7%; p = 0.04) weight groups. In the heaviest pigs group PWM was not affected by castration, but IM tended to show higher ADG (p = 0.06) and showed higher BWW (8.0 kg vs 7.8 kg; p = 0.05) than CM. There were no differences in percentage of pigs treated with antibiotics between the two groups (5.8% vs 5.8%; p = 0.98) in this study. Furthermore, PigMAP was increased in CM the day after castration (0.944 mg/ml vs 0.847 mg/ml; p = 0.025), but there was no difference between CM and IM groups at day 10. CONCLUSIONS: Surgical castration has a negative impact on production in the suckling period because it causes an increase in PWM, especially in pigs in the three lower quartiles for body weight, and negatively affects the BWW in pigs born in the highest quartile for body weight. BioMed Central 2017-09-06 /pmc/articles/PMC5585944/ /pubmed/28879020 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40813-017-0066-1 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis 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. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research
Morales, Joaquin
Dereu, Andre
Manso, Alberto
de Frutos, Laura
Piñeiro, Carlos
Manzanilla, Edgar G.
Wuyts, Niels
Surgical castration with pain relief affects the health and productive performance of pigs in the suckling period
title Surgical castration with pain relief affects the health and productive performance of pigs in the suckling period
title_full Surgical castration with pain relief affects the health and productive performance of pigs in the suckling period
title_fullStr Surgical castration with pain relief affects the health and productive performance of pigs in the suckling period
title_full_unstemmed Surgical castration with pain relief affects the health and productive performance of pigs in the suckling period
title_short Surgical castration with pain relief affects the health and productive performance of pigs in the suckling period
title_sort surgical castration with pain relief affects the health and productive performance of pigs in the suckling period
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5585944/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28879020
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40813-017-0066-1
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