Why is it important to have sows with a good social behavior?
As farms expand and skilled workers become scarce, pigs must thrive with minimal help. In today’s pig production, fostering social harmony among animals has become more crucial than ever. That is why Hypor aims to select females with strong social skills to live peacefully in groups. We focus on these traits to create a better environment for animals and workers, improving their general well-being.
We must then take into account the sow's experiences with both her peers and the farm workers over her lifetime. The more long-term positive interactions a sow has with animals or humans, the more we will see her as sociable.
How to achieve this?
Strong social skills keep sows calm, reduce stress and negative behaviors, and make them easier to manage for farm workers. For more insights on reducing animal stress levels, refer to this article.
However, measuring behavior can be challenging and sometimes subjective. It may therefore be worthwhile to look at traits that are easy to measure and indirectly improve the social skills of the sow. For example, in our nucleus farms, we house maternal lines in loose gestation pens.
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