Slatted floors and liquid manure–handling systems in intensive housing systems preclude the use of large straw quantities as enrichment material for pigs. Consequently, there is a need for alternative enrichment strategies, for example, by using...
The use of agricultural animals in biomedical research is increasing. Their overall size and metabolic rate, organ size, longer gestation period, and other physiological similarities make them good candidates for animal models of human disease...
In experiment 1, a total of 30 weaning pigs were allotted to three dietary treatments to check the palatability of the dietary feed. Diet treatments were as follows: reference diets = basal diets + 0.05%...
The objective of the study was to determine the interaction of pen enrichment and sex on growth performance and blood metabolite concentrations of Windsnyer pigs. Forty-eight growing Windsnyer pigs of both sexes, with an average...
Intensively housed domestic pigs (Sus scrofa) have little opportunity to perform diverse foraging behaviour though they still seem strongly motivated to do so. Here, we investigated whether the execution of specific behaviours may in itself...
Societal concerns about animal welfare have triggered the movement of gestating sows from individual stalls to group housing in many countries. Common methods of assessing sow welfare focus on overt physical ailments, and potentially neglect...
The neurobiological response to gentle touch remains poorly understood, especially in the context of human-animal interaction. A novel approach allowed recording the pig electroencephalogram (EEG) cranially epidurally and wirelessly during positive interactions with a human...
Environmental enrichment (EE) is widely used to study the effects of external factors on brain development, function and health in rodent models, but very little is known of the effects of EE on the brain...
The Laboratory Animal Technology department at Envigo were engaged to perform a toxicity study in juvenile Göttingen Minipigs. The test compound was a human milk formula additive. Therefore, to mimic the conditions of clinical administration...
In order for a scientific project involving animals to run smoothly, it is essential that the Animal Technologists have a good understanding of both the animals they are dealing with and of the project itself...