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Nancy Lidster: Moving Pigs - Does Board Color Matter?

Nov 14, 2012


Source: dnl farms ltd

At a recent meeting I was asked if pigs can see color and if they respond better to one color of board than to another.

What some scientists say about pigs’ color vision:

A paper on Temple Grandin’s site, “Behavioral Principles of Livestock Handling” says that while humans can see the full color range, pigs and other farmed species are most sensitive to yellow-green and blue-purple light.

Leif Lykke presented a paper in Denmark this year that says pigs can see black, grey, white, blue, red, and brown but that they can’t detect green, yellow or orange.

A visitor to our booth at World Pork Expo in Des Moines claimed he’d done many years of research into pigs’ vision. He claimed that pigs can’t see red and furthermore, that pigs in our videos wouldn’t respond to a handlers’ red board because they wouldn’t be able to see it. (Somehow inability to see its color would render the board transparent or invisible to the pigs??)
 
And my thoughts:

I think that worrying about board color is a distraction: that the color of the board doesn’t matter nearly as much as what you do with the board.

If your board is your main tool and you use it to crowd, shove, and force pigs to move, you’ll have problems whether the board is red, blue, green… or invisible to the pigs.

If you understand and use pigs’ natural response patterns as your main tool to move them and you carry the board along only for backup: if you give pigs the split seconds of time and space they need to establish and maintain the movement patterns you want:

-        pigs will move well for you no matter what color of board you carry

-        for many task your board will see limited active use

The more actively you depend on and use any hand held tool, the more likely you are to create pig handling problems with it.

That’s it for this time

Take care
Nancy Lidster

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