What should you do if pigs fight? What medication should be used? Why do pigs fight? What are the causes?
For large-scale pig farmers, pig fighting occurs from time to time, which leads to the appearance of crippled and sick pigs, and in severe cases can even cause pig deaths, affecting economic benefits. So what should you do if pigs fight? What medication should be used? Why do pigs fight? What are the causes?
1. Why do pigs fight? What are the causes?
1. Improper feeding management
(1) If piglets are not promptly trained to suckle from a fixed teat after birth, the piglets will fight over the teats.
(2) Piglets need to be grouped after weaning. Generally, when grouping, piglets of similar body weight, size and vitality should be placed in the same group, and the number of pigs should be determined according to the size of the pen. This principle should also be followed before nursery pigs are transferred to fattening pens; otherwise the group will be too large and uneven in strength, and pigs will fight to establish the order of the group, with the big bullying the small and the strong bullying the weak.
(3) When feeding is not timely and the water supply is insufficient, the pigs will fight over feed and water due to hunger and thirst.
(4) In addition, if the pigs take too long to eat, feed will stick to their bodies, causing other pigs, or pigs that have not eaten enough, to fight over the feed, resulting in biting and fighting within the herd.
(5) Pigs are strongly xenophobic. When a strange pig is mixed into the herd, its smell differs from that of the other pigs, and since pigs have a very keen sense of smell, fights within the herd easily occur.
(6) Suitable light intensity is beneficial to the growth and development of pigs, but when the light intensity is too high, the pigs' skin is prone to allergies and physical discomfort, which easily causes mental irritability and thus biting and fighting.
2. Living environment
Modern intensive pig farming results in excessive stocking density. Under such high-density conditions, due to the pigs' respiration and excretion, the temperature and humidity inside the barn become too high, which leads to excessively high levels of harmful gases such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and ammonia, worsening the air quality. If the relative humidity in the barn is too low, the dust inside the barn becomes excessive. If pigs live in such an environment for a long time, they will experience physical discomfort, which causes a disruption of their normal physiological functions, making them hyperactive and increasing their aggressiveness, thus causing biting and fighting.
3. Feed
The quality of feed ingredients has a great impact on pig health. When the ingredients become moldy and spoiled, or are not fresh and produce other odors, the palatability of the feed is affected, which reduces the feed intake of the herd and causes indigestion and chronic poisoning in the pigs. In this state, pigs develop metabolic problems, which cause biting and fighting.
Pigs themselves differ in breed and physiological stage, and individual pigs differ from one another, so their requirements for feed nutrition also differ. At present, no feed has been developed that fully meets all the nutritional needs of animals. Under the multiple influences of differences in feed ingredients, differences in feed intake and breed differences, it is unavoidable that some pigs will lack certain nutrients or trace elements, which is also a cause of biting and fighting within the herd. To supplement insufficient nutrient supply in the feed, or to improve the disease resistance of the herd and ensure its health, feed additives or medications are often added to the feed to achieve this purpose.
However, adding these additives in excess, such as high-energy and high-protein feed, high-arsenic diets and high-copper diets, will put too much burden on the pigs' liver and kidneys, or even cause damage, leading to disorders of the body and endocrine system, causing mental problems in the pigs such as extreme restlessness, and thus causing pigs to fight.
4. Other causes
In addition to the above causes, when pigs suffer external injuries for various reasons, resulting in the fishy and salty smell of blood on their bodies, or when a disease changes their body odor or urine odor, they are very easily identified by other pigs and subjected to group attacks by the other pigs. Intensive pig farming is characterized by high stocking density and feed based mainly on high-energy and high-protein feed, which easily causes the herd to develop internal heat, while the use of additives and hormones causes liver-qi stagnation that does not disperse, affecting their mood and easily leading to biting and fighting within the herd.
2. What should you do if pigs fight? What medication should be used?
1. How to treat pigs that fight, and what medication should be used?
(1) Apply a thick layer of ichthammol ointment to the tail of a pig whose tail has been bitten.
(2) Spray 70% alcohol into the nostrils of the whole herd, once every 3 hours.
(3) Disinfect the pig barn with strong-smelling cresol or a chlorine-containing disinfectant, spraying 2 times a day. Or spray a certain amount of iodine tincture and Huoxiang Zhengqi liquid onto pigs that have just been grouped.
(4) Add an additional 0.4%~0.5 salt and 0.3%~0.5% baking soda to the feed. Feed continuously for 2~3 days, and make sure the drinking water is sufficient.
(5) Add amino multivitamins or electrolytic multivitamins (such as Weilikang) to the drinking water, for 7 consecutive days.
(6) Scatter some granular salt, or chopped pieces and new bricks, inside the pen.
(7) Place a ball for the pigs to play with, hang up an iron plate, and hang an iron rod beside it. Let the pigs root and play with them.
2. How to prevent pigs from fighting?
(1) Ensure the herd's living environment is clean and hygienic, and give the herd a comfortable living environment. The barn should maintain temperature and humidity suitable for pig growth and development, and prevent the air inside the barn from becoming too dry, so as to reduce the amount of dust in the barn. Stocking density should also be arranged reasonably; generally the optimal stocking density is 8~10 pigs per pen. The area occupied by one pig should be about 1.5~2 sq m in summer and about 1.2~1.5 sq m in winter. This stocking density suits the current intensive farming model, allowing flexible monitoring of the herd's health status and making it easier to isolate pigs in time when problems are found. Manure and waste inside the barn should be cleaned up promptly every day to keep the barn hygienic. Whether in summer or winter, ventilation should be carried out appropriately to reduce the harm harmful gases bring to the herd, which will reduce the probability of fighting within the herd to a certain extent.
(2) Right after piglets are born, train them to suckle from a fixed teat, which can avoid fighting over teats. After weaning and before fattening, they should be grouped by breed, body weight, size, vitality, etc., to prevent the big bullying the small and the strong bullying the weak. Before grouping, to avoid fights caused by the different smells of pigs from different litters, spray cresol or mixed urine on the pigs to disrupt the smells in the barn, and arrange for them to be grouped at night. At the same time, before grouping, add some digestion-aiding additives to the feed so that the herd digests well and is ensured to eat and sleep well, which can reduce the probability of biting and fighting.
(3) Pay attention to the quality of the feed and to adequate and balanced nutritional supply. To prevent the herd from lacking certain types of nutrients, such as minerals, vitamins and trace elements, appropriate amounts of nutritional feed additives can be added to the feed according to the different physiological stages the herd is in, so as to ensure the health of the herd. This can effectively avoid fighting within the herd, but note that the additives must not be added in excess, otherwise they will have the opposite effect.