Farm pigs fare better on three square meals a day
Pigs raised in indoor pens have markedly different feeding habits from those raised in more natural conditions, a Swedish study has found. 
Photo: Christoper Bruno
While pigs in the wild eat many small meals throughout the day, conventionally reared animals seem to fare better on three square meals a day.
"The natural feeding behavior of pigs is searching for feed by rooting activities throughout the day," said lead author Dr Eva Persson. "Self-feeding pigs randomly space their activities and generally consume between 10 and 12 meals in an average day. By replicating this pattern in conventional indoor kept pigs, we had hoped they would fare better than those fed the traditional three meals."
The researchers fed a fixed quantity of food to 360 pigs, in either three or nine daily meals. The pigs fed three times a day fared noticeably better, gaining over 100g more weight per day than the pigs fed more frequently.
"Increased daily feeding occasions among group-housed pigs resulted in a poorer daily weight gain and an increased number of stomach problems," said Dr Persson. "It will be of great interest to those in the farming and animal welfare fields that this study does not support increased daily feeding occasions in fattening pigs."
Each group of nine pigs in the study had to share a 3m trough. As pigs fight for prime feeding positions, increased competition within the group could have led to the poorer performance of the pigs that were fed more often.
"More feeds meant smaller rations each time, and it is possible that each feeding occasion in our study did not offer enough feed to satisfy the hunger of all the pigs," said the authors.
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