Providing live black soldier fly larvae (Hermetia illucens) improves welfare while maintaining performance of piglets post-weaning.

ABSTRACT: During weaning, piglets experience concurrent social, physical, and nutritional stressors. Consequently, piglets often have poor feed intake and display increased oral manipulative behaviours post-weaning, indicative of compromised welfare. Black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) possess many attractive properties for pigs and could therefore function as effective edible enrichment, potentially alleviating weaning stress by facilitating exploration and promoting feed intake. In this study, pairs of piglets received a small amount of either live BSFL or wood shavings (8 pens/treatment) scattered throughout the pen twice a day for 11 days after weaning. Home-pen behaviour was scored by instantaneous scan sampling on day 2, 5 and 8, and behavioural responses to a novel environment and novel object we

SUBMITTER: Ipema AF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8016837 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature