Welcome to this edition of APRIL NEWS.
Research and Innovation provides a summary (courtesy of Honorary Professor Paul Hemsworth, The University of Melbourne) of a completed Australian Research Council-Linkage Project, Early life experiences and stress resilience in pigs. The summary, along with the publications mentioned, provides some sage and timely information about connections and consequences between early life experiences of piglets and subsequent impacts on stress physiology, production, and welfare and behaviour.
Education and Training provides a summary of Dr Soraya Leedham’s (Nee Haynes) PhD thesis that was recently conferred at Murdoch University.
Commercialisation and Innovation in this edition features a summary of all the Early Harvest Reports for the 2023-24 harvest through the AusScan Online NIR calibrations.
This edition’s Research Snapshot focuses specifically on a recently completed APRIL-supported project exploring different forms of thermographic technology to detect reproductive state in sows and improve piglet performance in a commercial farrowing house.
Our Member Focus this edition is on Dr Jessica Craig, Rivalea (Australia) Pty Ltd., JBS Australia Pork Division.
Recent Publications provides an update on publications arising from APRIL/Pork CRC-supported studies. Please let me know (j.pluske@april.org.au) if you have other publications that can be mentioned in future newsletters.
As always, we would welcome receiving APRIL-related information and upcoming events from our stakeholders for possible inclusion in the Newsletter [subject to space (preferred length is 100-150 words) and content].
Sincerely,
Dr John Pluske
CEO and Chief Scientist
j.pluske@april.org.au
Research and Innovation
Early life experiences and stress resilience in pigs
A recently completed Australian Research Council-Linkage Project has produced some very interesting and important findings relating early life experiences of piglets to aspects of stress and production.
The project was administered through The University of Melbourne, with Partner Organisations being APRIL, The University of Queensland, SunPork Pty Ltd., Rivalea (Australia) Pty Ltd., University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, and the USDA – Agricultural Research Service, USA.
This project focused mainly on the effects of positive human contact, housing system, and maternal contact during lactation. It was shown that providing piglets with regular but brief positive human contact during lactation conferred stress resilience in challenging situations both during lactation and following weaning. For example, early positive handling of piglets reduced their fear responses to husbandry procedures, such as processing during lactation, fear responses to humans both in lactation and the grower-finisher stage, injuries in lactation, and behavioural and cortisol responses to both weaning and isolation in the nursery stage of growth (Hayes et al., 2021; Lucas et al., 2024a,b,c; Tomas et al., 2024a,b).
Furthermore, positive handling early in life increased BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) concentrations, which appear to have an important role in stress resilience (Lucas et al., 2024c), and reduced the rate of loin muscle pH decline and resulted in a higher ultimate pH, two major characteristics of better eating quality of pork (Tomas et al., 2024c).
Positive handling of piglets in this series of experiments consisted of squatting, talking, patting and stroking piglets whenever they approached. These findings clearly indicate that brief positive handling of piglets during lactation improves the welfare of pigs both before and after weaning.
In a comparison of two housing systems, farrowing crates and farrowing pens (PigSafe system), crate-reared piglets had reduced play behaviour, sow-piglet interactions and BDNF concentrations during lactation in comparison to pen-reared piglets (Lucas et al., 2024a,b,c). However, there was no evidence that rearing in crates negatively affected pig welfare or general stress–coping ability after weaning (Lucas et al., 2024a,b,c). In fact, pen-reared piglets showed less flexibility in response to some specific stressors before and after weaning.
Collectively, the findings suggest that the welfare of piglets in pens was superior when undisturbed during rearing, but compared to crate-reared piglets, pen-reared piglets were less effective in coping with additional challenges in their environment, particularly challenges involving humans. Although pen-reared piglets were reared with more space, physical complexity and opportunity for sow-piglet interaction, they had less visual stimulation and opportunity for contact with people and other pigs in the farrowing pens studied in this project. The latter factors may have reduced the stress adaptability of pigs reared in this loose pen system.
Whether these findings are specific to the two housing systems studied here or can be generalised to other housing designs, warrants further research.
In addition to the effects of early human contact and housing, this project examined the importance of maternal contact on stress resilience by modifying farrowing crates to reduce piglet and sow nose-to-nose contact. Piglets reared in these modified crates showed increased fear responses to novelty and increased behavioural and cortisol responses to processing but not weaning, and also had reduced liveweight at weaning compared to piglets in conventional farrowing crates (Tomas et al., 2024a,b).
It was also of interest that the percentage of piglets not weaned, due to death, removal or low liveweight, was higher in piglets reared in modified farrowing crates (Tomas et al., 2024a). These findings suggest that reducing maternal contact in farrowing crates reduces the stress resilience of pigs, particularly during early life.
Overall, this project indicated that early human handling, housing system and maternal contact can have both immediate and longer-term consequences on the stress resilience of pigs. This research substantially contributes to a growing body of work on the importance of the pig’s early environment on its immediate and long-term welfare.
As a source of enrichment, positive human interactions provide several advantages: close interactions with piglets usually occur several times daily, positive interactions can be combined with routine checks, human interactions invariably provide variability in their predictability which will minimize habituation, and positive interactions may not require additional physical environmental enrichment resources, such as foraging material.
This research further highlights that humans are a key determining factor in the welfare of pigs.
Further information
Hayes, M.E., Hemsworth, L.M., Morrison, R.S., Tilbrook, A.J. and Hemsworth, P.H. (2021) Positive human contact and housing systems impact the responses of piglets to various stressors. Animals 11, 1619.
Lucas, M.E., Hemsworth, L.M., Butler, K.L., Morrison, R.S. Tilbrook, A.J., Marchant, J.N., Rault, J.-L., Galea, R.Y. and Hemsworth, P.H. (2024). Early human contact and housing for pigs – Part 1: Responses to humans, novelty and isolation. Animal, 101164.
Lucas, M. E., Hemsworth, L. M., Butler, K. L., Morrison, R. S., Tilbrook, A. J., Marchant, J. N., Rault, J.-L., Galea, R.Y. and Hemsworth, P. H. (2024). Early human contact and housing for pigs – Part 2: Resilience to routine husbandry practices. Animal, 101165.
Lucas, M. E., Hemsworth, L. M., Butler, K. L., Morrison, R. S., Tilbrook, A. J., Marchant, J. N., Rault, J.-L., Galea, R.Y. and Hemsworth, P. H. (2024). Early human contact and housing for pigs – Part 3: Ability to cope with the environment. Animal, 101166.
Tomas, K., Savaglia, J., Plush, K. J., D’Souza, D. N., Butler, K. L., Hemsworth, P. H. and Tilbrook, A. J. (2024a). Maternal contact and positive human interactions during lactation impacts piglet performance and behaviour during lactation. Frontiers in Animal Science, 4, 1289518.
Tomas, K., Savaglia, J., Plush, K.J., D’Souza, D.N., Butler, K.L., Hemsworth, P.H. and Tilbrook, A.J. (2024b). Maternal contact and positive human interactions during lactation impact on pig stress resilience post-weaning. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 276, 106326. Tomas, K, Savaglia, J, Plush, K, D’Souza, D, Butler, KL, Hemsworth, P.H. and Tilbrook, A.J. (2024c). Positive human contact to piglets during lactation improves pork loin muscle pH. Meat Science (in press).
Education and Training
Congratulations to Dr Soraya Leedham (nee Haynes) whose Doctor of Philosophy thesis was recently conferred at Murdoch University. Dr Leedham was the recipient of an APRIL top-up scholarship award during her PhD program.
Dr Leedham’s thesis, An exploration of the anti-infective potential of plant-sourced natural products, studied the roles that plant-sourced natural products can play in the fields of antiviral and disinfectant development. The main aims of the thesis were as follows:
1. Develop a simple, cost effective,high-throughput screening method which could be applied to the screening of natural product libraries for anti-coronavirus activity.
2. Demonstrate via proof-of-concept by applying this screening method to a library of Western Australian plant extracts, utilising it in a bioassay-guided fractionation process for the identification of lead antiviral compounds.
3. Highlight the broad-spectrum, anti-infective potential of plant-sourced natural products.
Overall, Dr Leedham’s thesis outlined the development of a rapid, cost-effective compound screening system which can be modified to target any number of viral pathogens within a short timeframe, making it ideal for screening large libraries in the face of emerging outbreaks.
In addition, the thesis illustrated the potential of plant-sourced natural products from native Australian plants. Dr Leedham is currently employed as a Research Officer in the Sepsis Diagnostics Research Group at Murdoch University, Perth, and as a Research Assistant for Biotome Pty Ltd., a Western Australian-based start-up company
Commercialisation and Innovation
Summary of 2023-24 Early Harvest Data from AusScan Online
As a conclusion to the monthly reporting of AusScan Online data conducted over the 2023-24 harvest, summary data have been produced that shows the variation in pig faecal digestible energy (DE) content, broiler apparent metabolisable energy (AME) content, and the protein percentage, for barley and wheat samples according to their geographical region.
The mean values for each variable and grain type across all geographical regions are shown in Table 1 and are derived from 2,030 barley and 8,040 wheat samples across Australia (except Western Australia).
The graphs represent predicted values from different regions over a 5-month period, November 2023 to April 2024.
Table 1: Mean values for pig faecal DE content, broiler AME content, and percentage protein for wheat and barley samples using AusScan Online NIR calibrations.
Focusing on pig DE content, mean values for barley were significantly different between the regions but showed little variation within a region and, including the outliers (denoted by coloured symbols outside the quartile markers), the range was 2.2 MJ/kg across all regions. Excluding outliers, the range was 1.2 MJ/kg (Figure 1).
In contrast, the mean pig faecal DE values for wheat were similar across all regions with a range of 3.5 MJ/kg (including outliers). However, excluding outliers, the range in predicted DE values reduced to approximately 0.5 MJ/kg (Figure. 2).
Excluding outliers, the percentage protein in both barley (Figure 3) and wheat (Figure 4) showed less variation within a region compared to the previous season, and both grains showed similar variations between regions.
Outliers are included in all graphs and indicate the importance of scanning grains for these key parameters.
For more information, please email Dr Charles Rikard-Bell (c.rikardbell@april.org.au; 0439 513 723).
Distribution of Pig Faecal DE (MJ/kg) by region for barley samples (Figure 1) and wheat samples (Figure 2) from November 2023 through to April 2024 as predicted by AusScan Online.
Distribution of Protein (%) by region for barley samples (Figure 5) and wheat samples (Figure 6) from November 2023 through to April 2024 as predicted by AusScan Online.
Research Snapshot
APRIL project 6A-104 (Use of thermographic technology to detect reproductive state in sows and improve piglet performance in a commercial farrowing house), led by Dr Jessica Craig and conducted at Rivalea (Australia Pty Ltd), JBS Australia Pork Division, aimed to assess first, the use of infrared thermography (IRT) in a commercial farrowing house to predict sow performance in lactation, and second, to identify sows at risk of common health concerns in lactation such as mastitis, shoulder sore formation, and other illnesses.
Key findings were as follows:
1. The FLIR E8 Ex series was the easiest hand-held IRT camera technology to use in a commercial farrowing house compared to the FLIR ONE Pro iPhone attachment or the FLIR Duo Pro.
2. Skin temperatures measured at the shoulder, ear base or posterior teats using the E8 camera were the most useful measurements that showed the most promise in terms of practicality and relationships with sow performance and health status in the farrowing house period.
3. Some skin temperatures measured by IRT may be related to litter size and piglet activity, which deserves to be further investigated. Unfortunately, skin temperature measured with the pointer function on the E8 camera was largely not predictive of sow performance in a way that could be useful to producers. 4. A number of environmental factors pose difficulties for the use of these technologies in a commercial setting, such as interference from piglets, bars of farrowing crates, water from cooling systems, contamination of skin from urine, faeces, dirt and feed dust, lighting, humidity, ambient temperature and air flow. All of these factors must be considered when using IRT within a commercial setting.
An example of the visible and infrared images showing three regions of interest as part of this project: (a) Ear base, (b) Shoulder, and (c) Posterior teats (further information can be found in the Final Report and SOP for the use of the FLIR E8 camera).
The applications of the project to industry can be summarised as follows:
1. Thermal cameras such as the FLIR E8 may be used as an alternative to (or used to complement) measurement of rectal temperature of sows in lactation as a non-invasive way to measure body temperature.
2. That skin temperatures be measured at the point of the shoulder, ear base and posterior teats when IRT technologies are used in a commercial farrowing house.
3. That IRT may be used to measure shoulder, udder and/or ear base temperature when assessing sows for impacts of JEV around farrowing.
4. Production of a SOP for determination of eye and ear temperatures using the FLIR E8 camera was accomplished.
This project also involved two other APRIL-supported projects where knowledge and resources were shared. A thank you is extended to Professor Eugeni Roura, Dr Max Muller, Dr Marta Navarro-Gomez and Astrid Coba Cedeno from The University of Queensland (6A-101; Heat tolerance in lactating sows: dietary strategies, metabolic biomarkers and microbiome signature), and Dr Kate Plush and Dr Lauren Staveley (SunPork) and Associate Professor Jeremy Cottrell (6A-102; Hot and bothered! Long term impacts of late pregnancy heat stress on sows and progeny).
Final Reports for these ‘sister projects’ will be shared once they become available.
A copy of the Project Summary, Final Report, and the SOP relating to the use of this camera, for this project, can be found here.
Member Focus – Dr Jessica Craig [Rivalea (Australia) Pty Ltd., JBS Australia Pork Division]
I grew up in Narrabri in regional New South Wales but really had no agricultural knowledge whatsoever, despite my dad and three brothers being pilots working in agriculture.
Upon finishing high school and completing a gap year continuing my first job working at Eagle Boys Pizza (turns out I’ve been working with pork since year 10!), I moved to Sydney to study a Bachelor of Animal and Veterinary Bioscience at The University of Sydney. This came about as I had decided after I finished high school that I liked animals and the only job you could really do with animals was to be a vet…how wrong I was!
After completing my first year of my Bachelor’s degree, I found out that I enjoyed animal science and wanted to stick it out to do research. I completed my Honours year working on a project with Dr Roslyn Bathgate investigating ideal diluents for cryopreservation of alpaca semen.
Upon graduation, I started as a Technical Officer at Rivalea in the Research and Innovation Department and moved to Corowa, NSW. A few years into that role I was lucky enough to complete my PhD program with John Pluske, Frank Dunshea and Jeremy Cottrell looking closely at the performance of gilt progeny in commercial production. I completed my degree through Murdoch University but was based at Rivalea and continued working as a technical officer in that time.
I was then accepted into the APRIL Industry Placement Program as a Research Scientist after completion of my PhD, a role I continued with after the program and am still employed to this day. Currently I am working with APRIL and APL on several projects, as well as internally with Rivalea and the JBS Pork Division in a diverse field of subject areas. My current projects include work in all aspects of gilt development, development of a single shot vaccine for APP (Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae), and several nutritional strategies in gestation and lactation to reduce the number and improve the performance of low-birth-weight piglets.
Other aspects of my job as a research scientist that I really enjoy include serving on the Rivalea Animal Ethics Committee (as a Category B member and now Secretary), the APSA Committee (as the Vice President for the 2025 conference), attending animal science conferences, collaborating with our amazing research partners, and mentoring students, graduates, technical officers and other young minds within Rivalea/JBS and throughout the wider Australian pork and agricultural industries. Outside of work I am mum to my gorgeous 2½ year old son Darcy and step-mum to Maddi (16) and Abbey (14), and I enjoy watching them all grow and learn, as well as reading, training at the gym, meeting new people and catching up with friends over coffee, food and cocktails!
Recent Publications
Recent publications from APRIL/Pork CRC-supported projects and (or) students are as follows:
1. Collins, A. and Collins, C. (2024). Epidemiology tools to evaluate the control of proliferative enteropathy in commercial pig herds. Animals 14: 1357.
2. Cottrell, J.J., Green, M.P., Dunshea, F.R., Liu, F., Plush, K.J. and Zhao, W. (2023). Identification of how future climates may impact the reproductive herd and what this may mean for nutrition. Journal of Animal Science 101 (Supplement 3), 208-209. (https://doi.org/10.1093/jas/skad281.252).
3. Lucas, M.E., Hemsworth, L.M., Butler, K.L., Morrison, R.S. Tilbrook, A.J., Marchant, J.N., Rault, J.-L., Galea, R.Y. and Hemsworth, P.H. (2024). Early human contact and housing for pigs – Part 1: Responses to humans, novelty and isolation. Animal 101164 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.animal.2024.101164).
4. Lucas, M.E., Hemsworth, L.M., Butler, K.L., Morrison, R.S. Tilbrook, A.J., Marchant, J.N., Rault, J.-L., Galea, R.Y. and Hemsworth, P.H. (2024). Early human contact and housing for pigs – Part 2: Resilience to routine husbandry practices. Animal 101165 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.animal.2024.101165).
5. Lucas, M.E., Hemsworth, L.M., Butler, K.L., Morrison, R.S. Tilbrook, A.J., Marchant, J.N., Rault, J.-L., Galea, R.Y. and Hemsworth, P.H. (2024). Early human contact and housing for pigs – Part 3: Ability to cope with the environment. Animal 101166 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.animal.2024.101166).
6. Tomas, K., Savaglia, J., Plush, K.J., D’Souza, D.N., Butler, K.L., Hemsworth, P.H. and Tilbrook, A.J. (2024). Maternal contact and positive human interactions during lactation impact on pig stress resilience post-weaning. Applied Animal Behaviour Science 276: 106326.
7. Tucker, B.S., Jorquera-Chavez, M., Petrovski, K.R., Craig, J.R., Morrison, R.S., Smits, R.J. and Kirkwood, R.N (2023). Comparing surface temperature locations with rectal temperature in neonatal piglets under production conditions. Journal of Applied Animal Research 51: 1, 212-219, DOI: 10.1080/09712119.2023.2176310.
8. Wijesiriwardana, U.A., Pluske, J.R., Craig, J.R., Furness, J.B., Ringuet, M., Fothergill, L.J., Dunshea, F.R. and Cottrell, J.J. (2024). A comparative analysis of gastrointestinal tract barrier function and immune markers in gilt vs. sow progeny at birth and weaning. Journal of Animal Science 102: skae054 (https://doi.org/10.1093/jas/skae054). A reminder that any dissemination of information in relation to APRIL-funded projects requires prior approval. An approval form can be fund here.
Conferences, Events, Important Dates
- 2024 ASAS-CSAS-WSASAS Annual Meeting, 21-25 July 2024 (Calgary, AB, Canada; https://www.asas.org/meetings/annual-2024).
- 9th International Conference on the Welfare of Animals at Farm Level (WAFL), 30-31 August 2024 (Florence, Italy; https://wafl2024.eaap.org).
- 75th EAAP Meeting, 1-5 September 2024 (Florence, Italy; https://www.isrp2024.org/).
- Pig Veterinarians Conference, 4-6 September 2024 (Wollongong, NSW).
- APL Delegates Meeting,16-17 October 2024 (Melbourne, VIC).
- APL Annual General Meeting, 17 October 2024 (Melbourne, VIC).
- British Society of Animal Science Annual Conference (‘Supporting Livestock’s Role in a Global Society’), 8-10 April 2025 (Galway, Ireland).
- 16th International Symposium on Digestive Physiology of Pigs, 20-23 May 2025 (Lake Geneva, WI, USA; https://www.dppigs.org/2025-Meeting).