ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Animal Behavior and Welfare
This article is part of the Research TopicEnvironmental Enrichment: Neurobiology, affective states, and positive animal welfareView all 12 articles
First lactation performance of Maternity Ring sows is comparable to those housed in a farrowing crate
Provisionally accepted
- 1SunPork Group, Brisbane, Australia
- 2Massey University School of Agriculture and Environment, Palmerston North, New Zealand
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There is trade-off between sow and piglet welfare in farrowing pens whereby increased behavioural freedom of sows results in unacceptable levels of piglet mortality. Improvements in sow welfare have been demonstrated in such housing systems; however, the footprint is often at least 50% greater than a standard farrowing crate. This remains an impediment to adoption of confinement free farrowing. The Maternity Ring, a system with a similar footprint as a farrowing crate, was designed to avoid close confinement of sows. This systems performance, particularly piglet survival, has not yet been quantified but is an essential part of evaluating commercial viability and acceptability in respect of piglet welfare. This experiments aim was to determine whether piglet mortality differed between farrowing crates and Maternity Rings. First parity sows were recruited over twelve months and allocated randomly to one of two treatments; farrowing crate (FC; n = 184) and Maternity Ring (MR; n = 205). Litter size and piglet mortality (number, age, cause of death) were recorded, as were piglet fostering movements and medical interventions for sows and litters. There was no difference in total pigs born, born alive or number of pigs weaned between the two treatments. There was a tendency for a 0.3 pig per litter increase in pre-foster mortality in MR sows (p = 0.065), but pigs born dead, post-foster, liveborn and total deaths were similar to FC sows. Piglet removal for ill thrift was 0.3 pigs per litter lower in MR sows (p = 0.05), and the incidence of medications in litters reduced to This is a provisional file, not the final typeset article 50% from 62% (p < 0.05). Additionally, sows were medicated less frequently in MR (6%) versus FC (15%; p < 0.05). For first parity sows, comparable liveborn piglet mortality can be achieved in a MR to a FC. Future work will test the repeatability of this performance as this cohort of sows continue to be managed within the same system across multiple parities.
Keywords: sow, welfare, farrowing, performance, PEN, Piglet survival, maternity ring
Received: 02 Oct 2025; Accepted: 29 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Plush, Chidgey, Young, D'Souza and van Barneveld. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kate Plush
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