Reducing Stress Key to Moving Hogs Effectively and Efficiently

A production manager with Olymel specializing in animal handling and training suggests, by slowing down and considering the natural behaviors of the pig, handlers will find moving those pigs to be much easier and less stressful."Tips and Tricks for Working with Hogs; Practical Strategies for Handling Hogs" was among the topics discussed last month as part of Saskatchewan Pork Industry Symposium 2025 in Saskatoon.

Kevin Brooks, a production manager specializing in animal handling and training with Olymel West in Humboldt, says one of the biggest mistakes we see is handlers try to move too many pigs and send a mixed message to those animals resulting in confusion and unnecessary stress.

Quote-Kevin Brooks-Olymel:

Something new we've been looking at going on three to five years is starting to observe and understand what the pig is doing.We've always done things in the past that we thought we'd get a reaction from the animal but now we're just starting to observe and we're starting to understand that, if we let them go on their own and we're smart about our body position, we get a lot of positive effects for the pigs themselves and obviously for us too.

We talk about stressors. We talk about our own stress.We always say, if you have a bad day at home and you go to load animals, you're going to have a bad day loading. Everything from family to our spouse to financials to our jobs, those are all stressors to us and if we get all those stressors we have a bad day.
Pigs have a lot stressors too.

They have stressors from shadows, understanding their depth perception, being a prey animal, being pushed by us or attacking them in their mind and even a pig pushing a pig is also a form of stress for them. They've got lots of stresses too so if we take that into consideration, we're going to have a lot more successes in moving.

Brooks notes times are changing and changes made over the past few years in the way pigs are moved have benefited both the pigs and the people.He suggests the biggest mistake made by people who have worked with pigs for a long time is they have always done things one way and are not prepared to try new approaches.