Increasing litter size has long been a goal of pig breeders and producers, and may have implications for pig (Sus scrofa domesticus) welfare. This paper reviews the scientific evidence on biological factors affecting sow and piglet welfare in relation to large litter size. It is concluded that, in a number of ways, large litter size is a risk factor for decreased animal welfare in pig production. Increased litter size is associated with increased piglet mortality, which is likely to be associated with significant negative animal welfare impacts. In surviving piglets, many of the causes of mortality can also occur in non-lethal forms that cause suffering. Intense teat competition may increase the likelihood that some piglets do not gain adequate access to milk, causing starvation in the short term and possibly long-term detriments to health. Also, increased litter size leads to more piglets with low birth weight which is associated with a variety of negative long-term effects. Finally, increased production pressure placed on sows bearing large litters may produce health and welfare concerns for the sow. However, possible biological approaches to mitigating health and welfare issues associated with large litters are being implemented. An important mitigation strategy is genetic selection encompassing traits that promote piglet survival, vitality and growth. Sow nutrition and the minimisation of stress during gestation could also contribute to improving outcomes in terms of piglet welfare. Awareness of the possible negative welfare consequences of large litter size in pigs should lead to further active measures being taken to mitigate the mentioned effects.

/pdf/the-welfare-implications-of-large-litter-size-in-the-2n54tifvbj.pdf

The welfare implications of large litter size in the domestic pig I: biological factors

Optic ataxia: a specific disruption in visuomotor mechanisms. I. Different aspects of the deficit in reaching for objects

Introduction: 
The aim of the study was to see if some of the effects of hippocampal brain damage on attention-related function may be mediated perhaps trans-synaptically in the dopamine (DA) system.

Methods:
A food search task in a 16-hole board was developed (based on search studies used to investigate the avian hippocampus (Oades 1976), but suitable for rodents). Food-deprived rats were required to locate 4 pellets located in 4 of 16 holes in an enclosed arena.
Three groups of animals were studied in 11 test sessions : - rats with bilateral hippocampal aspiration lesions, bilateral neocortical damage (overlying the hippocampus), and an unoperated group. Half of each group received haloperidol (DA D2 antagonist) and half saline before sessions 4 through 10. No injections were administered on the first three or the last test session.

Results: 
1/ Animals with hippocampal damage visited more non-food holes (errors) than the controls, AND did not develop consistent sequences of food-hole visits as the other animals did.
2/ In unoperated controls haloperidol reduced the number of preferred sequences of food-hole visits, WITHOUT affecting the efficiency of performance as measured by the number of non-food-holes visited (i.e., the number of errors did not increase).
3/ Haloperidol treatment of those with hippocampal damage 
reduced the number of non-food-hole visits (i.e. reduced the number of errors made in comparison to the saline treated animals with hippocampal damage).

Conclusions:
It is likely that hippocampal damage incurs increased DA activity elsewhere that for the search task is not adaptive and brings about an increase in the number of errors made. This contrasts with the normal development of a consistent sequence of food-hole visits (individually specific) - one form of working memory aid - that is disrupted by haloperidol and by hippocampal damage. Neuroleptic treatment of the hippocampal animals did not reinstate this preferred sequence but by dampening DA activity (reducing switching between alternatives, Oades 1985) improved attention-related search performance by decreasing the number of erros made.

This result may be seen post-hoc as a model for some of the functions disturbed in schizophrenia - where there is evidence for impaired medial temporal lobe function (hippoicampus, parahippocampal gyrus) and often hyper-active DA systems, sometimes ameliorated through neuroleptic treatment (see further studies by Lipska and Weinberger: e.g. Lipska et al. 1992; 1993, 1994, 1995; Sams-Dodd et al., 1997; Wood et al., 1997).

Subsequent investigations of the role of DA and VTA function on attention and memory related measures in the holeboard were reported : - Oades et al., 1981a, 1981b, 1981c, 1982, 1985.

The development of food search behavior by rats: the effects of hippocampal damage and haloperidol

Abstract Animal welfare is a state within the animal and a scientific perspective provides methodologies for evidence-based assessment of an animal's welfare. A simplistic definition of animal welfare might be how the animal feels now. Affective experiences including emotions, are subjective states so cannot be measured directly in animals, but there are informative indirect physiological and behavioural indices that can be cautiously used to interpret such experiences. This review enunciates several key science-based frameworks for understanding animal welfare. The biological functioning and affective state frameworks were initially seen as competing, but a recent more unified approach is that biological functioning is taken to include affective experiences and affective experiences are recognised as products of biological functioning, and knowledge of the dynamic interactions between the two is considered to be fundamental to managing and improving animal welfare. The value of these two frameworks in understanding the welfare of group-housed sows is reviewed. The majority of studies of the welfare of group-housed sows have employed the biological functioning framework to infer compromised sow welfare, on the basis that suboptimal biological functioning accompanies negative affective states such as sow hunger, pain, fear, helplessness, frustration and anger. Group housing facilitates social living, but group housing of gestating sows raises different welfare considerations to stall housing, such as high levels of aggression, injuries and stress, at least for several days after mixing, as well as subordinate sows being underfed due to competition at feeding. This paper highlights the challenges and potential opportunities for the continued improvement in sow management through well-focused research and multidisciplinary assessment of animal welfare. In future the management of sentient animals will require the promotion of positive affective experiences in animals and this is likely to be a major focus for animal welfare science activity in the early twenty-first century.

The scientific assessment of animal welfare.

Domestic pigs alter their social strategy in response to social group size

Learning impairments are often seen in children born with low birth weight (LBW) A model with translational value for long-term effects of LBW in humans is needed to further our understanding of how LBW and cognition are related The similarities between development stages in human infants and piglets, and the high prevalence of LBW piglets make them a naturally occurring potential model in which to study cognitive impairment associated with LBW in humans Although both groups learned the configurations and rapidly reduced the number of incorrect visits, the LBW piglets showed a transiently retarded acquisition of the first reversal The results of the experiment support the hypothesis that LBW is related to (mild) subsequent cognitive impairments In the future, piglets may be suitable models for testing the effects of putative therapeutics To examine this potential model, we tested pairs of LBW and NBW (normal-birth-weight) piglets in a spatial hole-board (a matrix with 4 × 4 holes in the floor) task during one acquisition and two reversal phases in their own individual configurations of rewarded holes

/pdf/cognitive-performance-of-low-and-normal-birth-weight-piglets-36rhx7on0q.pdf

Cognitive performance of low- and normal-birth-weight piglets in a spatial hole-board discrimination task

Improper social behavior development brings problems in later social life. Several time points are known to be crucial for the development and in other words, susceptible to interruptions during those time points. In conventional pigs, those time points could be categorized to three interaction periods, the period for piglet-sow interaction (suckling), between littermates interaction (before weaning), social interaction with other littermates (after weaning).
In this research, 4 cages (51 pigs) of pigs were observed for figuring out circadian rhythm and social behavior pattern. In group observation, the circadian rhythm of conventional pigs was established as a pair of active hours in early morning and early evening. Over three recordings of three different time points of day 10, 14 and 24, the behavior status ‘active’ increased with their physical developmental status and this is suggesting increase in potential social behaviors. In individual observation, the environmental change induced by maternal separation and mixing of other littermates resulted change in specific social behavioral pattern. Additional second individual observation also showed changed social behavioral pattern.
The results in this research could suggest the needs for proper social behavioral development according to the critical time points and social environmental changes so that prevent existing behavioral problems and improve the welfare of conventional farm pigs.

Social behaviour of pigs

It has been suggested that dogs' remarkable capacity to use human communicative signals lies in their comparable social cognitive skills; however, this view has been questioned recently. The present study investigated associations between oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) polymorphisms and social behavior in human infants and dogs with the aim to unravel potentially differential mechanisms behind their responsiveness to human gaze. Sixteen-month-old human infants (N = 99) and adult Border Collie dogs (N = 71) participated in two tasks designed to test (1) their use of gaze-direction as a cue to locate a hidden object, and (2) their reactions to an aversive social interaction (using the still face task for children and a threatening approach task for dogs). Moreover, we obtained DNA samples to analyze associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in the OXTR (dogs: -213AG, -94TC, -74CG, rs8679682, children: rs53576, rs1042778, rs2254298) and behavior. We found that OXTR genotype was significantly associated with reactions to an aversive social interaction both in dogs and children, confirming the anxiolytic effect of oxytocin in both species. In dogs, the genotypes linked to less fearful behavior were associated also with a higher willingness to follow gaze whereas in children, OXTR gene polymorphisms did not affect gaze following success. This pattern of gene-behavior associations suggests that for dogs the two situations are more alike (potentially fear-inducing or competitive) than for human children. This raises the possibility that, in contrast to former studies proposing human-like cooperativeness in dogs, dogs may perceive human gaze in an object-choice task in a more antagonistic manner than children.

/pdf/gaze-following-and-reaction-to-an-aversive-social-2wra80ogj3.pdf

Gaze-Following and Reaction to an Aversive Social Interaction Have Corresponding Associations with Variation in the OXTR Gene in Dogs but Not in Human Infants.

during action preparation TMS of the anterior intraparietal area selectively modulates orientation change detection including high resolution figures, can be found at: Updated information and services publishes original articles on the function of the nervous system. It is published 12 times a year Journal of Neurophysiology

Selection for Action Neural and Temporal Dynamics Underlying Visual

preparationorientation change detection during action TMS of the anterior intraparietal area selectively

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