Towards the quantitative characterization of piglets’ robustness to weaning: A modelling approach

Abstract

Weaning is a critical transition phase in swine production in which piglets must cope with different stressors that may affect their health. During this period, the prophylactic use of antibiotics is still frequent to limit piglet morbidity, which raises both economic and public health concerns such as the appearance of antimicrobial-resistant microbes. With the interest of developing tools for assisting health and management decisions around weaning, it is key to provide robustness indexes that inform on the animals capacity to endure the challenges associated to weaning. This work aimed at developing a modelling approach for facilitating the quantification of piglet resilience to weaning. We monitored 325 Large White pigs weaned at 28 days of age and further housed and fed conventionally during the post-weaning period without antibiotic administration. Body weight and diarrhoea scores were recorded before and after weaning, and blood was sampled at weaning and one week later for collecting haematological data. We constructed a dynamic model based on the Gompertz-Makeham law to describe live weight trajectories during the first 75 days after weaning following the rationale that the animal response is partitioned in two time windows (a perturbation and a recovery window). Model calibration was performed for each animal. Our results show that the transition time between the two time windows, as well as the weight trajectories are characteristic for each individual. The model captured the weight dynamics of animals at different degrees of perturbation, with an average coefficient of determination of 0.99, and a concordance correlation coefficient of 0.99. The utility of the model is that it provides biological parameters that inform on the amplitude and length of perturbation, and the rate of animal recovery. Our rationale is that the dynamics of weight inform on the capability of the animal to cope with the weaning disturbance. Indeed, there were significant correlations between model parameters and individual diarrhoea scores and haematological traits. Overall, the parameters of our model can be useful for constructing weaning robustness indexes by using exclusively the growth curves. We foresee that this modelling approach will provide a step forward in the quantitative characterization of robustness.\n\nImplicationsThe quantitative characterization of animal robustness at weaning is a key step for management strategies to improve health and welfare. This characterization is also instrumental for the further design of selection strategies for productivity and robustness. Within a precision livestock farming optic, this study develops a mathematical modelling approach to describe the body weight of piglets from weaning with the rationale that weight trajectories provide central information to quantify the capability of the animal to cope with the weaning disturbance.