Sandra Edwards

Weight and season affects androstenone and skatole occurrence in entire male pigs in organic pig production

To investigate the extent to which the level of androstenone and skatole decreases with a decrease in live weight and/or age at slaughter of entire male pigs produced under organic standards, 1174 entire male pigs were raised in parallel in five organic herds, distributed across four batches in summer and winter. The median androstenone level was high for organic entire male pigs (1.9 µg/g), but varied greatly both within and between herds. Median skatole level was 0.05 µg/g, also with a wide range both within and between herds. Decreasing live weight over the range of 110 ± 15.6 kg s.d. was found to decrease androstenone as well as skatole concentration, however, with different patterns of association. Age did not have significant direct effect on either androstenone or skatole levels. Androstenone levels were higher during winter than summer (P<0.0001), but no difference in skatole was found between seasons. The study concludes that decreasing live weight at slaughter could be an applicable management tool to reduce risk of boar taint and the level of tainted carcasses for a future production of entire male pigs within the organic pig production system, although further studies are needed as great variation in boar taint was found also for low weight animals.

PigSurfer – SURveillance, FEedback & Reporting within ProPIG for communication with 75 pig farmers

The CoreOrganic2 research project ProPIG is carried out in 75 organic pig farms in 8 European countries (AT; CH; CZ; DE; DK; FR; IT; UK) to improve animal health, welfare and nutrition using farm customised strategies. For future on-farm application (e.g. advisory/certification activities, which are mostly carried out during one day visits), a practical, automatic recording and feedback tool was developed. This should allow on-farm data collection, import of data into a database and the possibility for benchmarking, including a printed output for the farmer to facilitate immediate discussion of results and improvement strategies. To document not only animal health and welfare, but also integrate diet composition and productivity data, it was important to choose key indicators from all areas, which would be available across all eight countries. Based on existing on-farm welfare assessment protocols (e.g. WelfareQuality®, CorePIG) indicators were selected by the consortium, which were then transferred into a Software programme (“PigSurfer”). This Software is available as Desktop- or Android version to be used on Tablet PCs, so that on-farm data (interview with farmer; direct observations on weaners, finishers, sows; productivity and treatment records; feed) can be entered directly. During two visits a database was built and a “Farm report” was printed for each farm, with benchmarking of results, feedback and discussion with the farmer. After a year, “PigSurfer” was used to carry out the following complete process during one day visits across Europe: Surveillance of health and welfare, feedback of data in comparison with results from the previous year as well as benchmarking with 75 other pig farms and printing a report. “PigSurfer” is a promising tool for communicating health and welfare, as it provides not only a database, which can be continuously extended, but is an important step to move from research to on-farm application across Europe.