| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立屏東科技大學 === 畜產系 === 93 === There is no doubt that the reproduction and growth performance of pigs is influenced by the effect of housing environment, breed and nutrition. To increase the performance of growth, the breeder performs many ways including the choice of wet-pad housing to decrease the hot stress, improving the farrowing crate for restricting sow’s activities during farrowing, to decrease the death of piglets from crush by sow, reinforcing the airflow around the sow while the sow is standing, pushing the piglets away from sow to avoid the incidence of crush, improving the nutrition while the sow is pregnant and in lactation to increase piglet’s weight and improving the creep feeding to increase the survival and weaning weight of piglets. However, these managements might undermine the normal behavior of pigs, especially in the behavior of mother-offspring. Therefore, the study is designed to investigate the behavior of nursing time, nursing frequency and the general behavior of mother-offspring in breed, season, week and time.
Three breeds in terms of Meishan (M), Duroc (D) and Meishan X Duroc (MD) were used in this study. M breed was observed in free-range while D and MD breed were observed in farrowing pen. Observation was carried out at 7:00 a. m. the next day after the last piglet was born for 24 hrs. Samples were recorded every minute for 24 hrs by 4-6 students once a week. M breed was observed for 7 weeks and D and MD breed were observed for 5 weeks. The season was divided into hot and cold season. Five litters in cold season and four litters in hot season of M breed were observed. Five litters of D and MD breed were observed in either cold or hot season, respectively. Totally there are 29 litters were observed.
The result showed that the nursing duration and frequency in hot season was higher than cold season (for every 1, 6, 12 and 24 hrs). For breed, M breed was the lowest and MD breed was the highest one. For week, both of the nursing duration and frequency was decreasing progressively by week. For period, the second period of time, e.g. 07:00 to 12:59 was the lowest and the fourth period of time e.g. 19:00 to 00:59 was the highest one. In comparison of day (7:00 to 18:59) and night (19:00 to 06:59 next day), nursing behavior in the night was more than in the day. The same result was come up in M breed.
The behaviors of sow were recorded for 12 hrs. Lying and encircling behavior in M breed was the highest among the three breeds. For nursing behavior, M breed was the lowest in 12 hrs and MD breed was the highest one. To sum up the behavior of M breed, lying time was increased by week, but nursing duration was decreased by week.
For the farrowing area, the sow of M breed would choose shadow area for parturition in hot season. In non-shadow area, the sow of M breed would farrow in early morning or night.
For the influence of season on piglets of M breed, lying duration was the highest in all behaviors and the lying behavior in the hot season was higher than in the cold season. The huddle behavior occupied the second high place and such behavior in the cold season was higher than in the hot season. Therefore, the environmental temperature in hot season was appropriate for M breed. However, heat preservation was still needed in cold season. Otherwise, although M breed was considered as more endurable to rough pasture, piglets still huddled by each other to keep warm.
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