Space requirements of barrows and gilts penned together from 54 to 113 kilograms. NCR-89 Committee on Confinement Management of Swine.
Two experiments, involving six experiment stations in the North Central Region of the United States, were conducted to examine the space requirements of mixed-sex pigs (barrows and gilts) from 54 to 113 kg live weight. In both experiments, corn- or milo-soybean meal-based diets were formulated within stations to contain .6% lysine and no growth-promoting feed additive. In Exp. 1, entire pens of pigs given .56, .74, or .93 m2/pig remained on test until the week that the individual pen of pigs weighed > or = 113.6 kg. In Exp. 2, treatments were .56, .74, .93, and 1.11 m2/pig and individual pigs were removed during the week that they weighed > or = 113.6 kg. There was a linear (P < .005) improvement in ADG in Exp. 1 for the .56, .74, and .93 m2/pig treatments (.64, .69, and .72 kg/d). This response was accompanied by a linear (P < .05) improvement in gain:feed (.247, .258, and .261, respectively). In Exp. 2, the linear (P < .0005) response of ADG to increasing space allocation (.71, .76, .80, and .81 kg/d for the respective treatments) and the linear (P < .005) improvement in gain:feed (.265, .268, .274, and .281, respectively) suggested that pig performance reached a plateau. These results suggest that performance of pens of mixed-sex pigs grown to 113 kg live weight was maximized at the .93 m2/pig space allocation.
D000818:Animals; D004435:Eating; D005260:Female; D006799:Housing, Animal / Q000592:standards*; D008297:Male; D013552:Swine / Q000254:growth & development / Q000502:physiology*; D015430:Weight Gain