Is maternal behaviour of free-ranging sows different from that in intensive housing?

This study was devoted to the analysis of maternal behaviour of a sample of 5 free-ranging domestic sows in order to ascertain possible differences with sows farrowing in crates in intensive breeding units. The latter were studied in a previous study (Csermely & Nicosia, J. Ethol. 9: 83, 1991) with the same type of analysis. The general behaviour of sows and their activity towards the litter were recorded daily from farrowing to day 8 afterwards. The sows generally behaved rather homogeneously but not with regard to the onset and duration of nest desertion in early days after farrowing. That activity seemed to be greatly affected by the amount of metabolic intake obtained by sows before farrowing. They performed a considerably smaller amount of behavioural transitions compared to sows in intensive housing. Such a decrease, very evident after day 5, might demonstrate that sows in crates can hardly cope with their environment, suffering particularly from immobility. The nursing behaviour was rather similar to that observed in indoor conditions. However, there was a high frequency of active nursing terminations by the sow instead of by the litter (Table 1). Such score was very similar to what observed in subordinate sows grouped during pregnancy. The similarity can be explained with the difficulty of both types of sows to get a sufficiently high energetic income in the last part of pregnancy. In conclusion, free-ranging sows neither showed great variability of maternal behaviour between individuals nor varied their behaviour in relation to the more variable environment at farrowing. In contrast, the higher frequency of behavioural changes of those intensively housed is an indication of lack of adaptation to the intensive housing conditions