Researchers study pigs to improve their quality of life
By Marlena Hartz / Avalanche-Journal / Aug. 21, 2007 "" Page 1On the table, tube socks and blue jumpsuits - like the one's mechanics wear - are jumbled. Mhairi Sutherland rakes through the pile with her hands and finds a jumpsuit that fits and socks that match.
Before she changes, she warns, "When you walk into a pig farm, it's like walking into a smoky bar. The smell clings to you.
"Pigs," she stresses, "have a very distinct smell."
It's an odor to which Sutherland, a research associate at Texas Tech, has grown accustomed. She has passed entire weeks here, at this Texas Tech-owned farm in rural New Deal where hundreds of pigs are housed.
The animals are the objects of Sutherland's research, which has been labeled applied animal welfare. Simply put, Sutherland, who teaches in the Tech department of Animal and Food Sciences, hopes to improve the lives of swine - a staple of the farm scene and of some people's diets.
"In a perfect world, a pig would have its own pen and run around in a pasture. But it's important to make (research) applicable so that it can actually happen and be applied in the real world," said Sutherland, a native of New Zealand who has been at Tech since 2002.
At the university, Sutherland leads a team of about seven people. Their experiments vary - one researcher, for example, is using pigs to test asthma treatments. Currently, however, the majority of their experiments center around everyday farm practices, such as weaning and snipping pigs' curly tails into stubs, a practice commonly referred to as tail docking. The Tech researchers measure the amount of cortisol, a hormone produced when animals experience stress, in the pigs' blood to determine how much stress is induced by certain practices.
On the farm, in a jumpsuit and black galoshes, Sutherland strolls into one of her favorite areas, the barn where nursing sows and their piglets are kept. With a steady hand, she reaches down and grabs a baby by its hind leg. Baby pigs struggle less, she explains, when they are handled this way.
Still, her intrusion causes a commotion. The baby pig squeals and its mother, and others in nearby enclosures, grows unsettled. When disturbed, the massive sows, weighing from 300 to 600 pounds, grunt and let out barks like dogs.
"How ya doing?" she coos to the piglet. "You definitely get very attached to (pigs). They all have their own personality," Sutherland said as dozens of other piglets teetered around their enclosures at the farm.
In Sutherland's native New Zealand, pigs are a rarity. Her career in applied animal welfare began with research on sheep, and only after she came to America did she become acquainted with swine. The creatures took some getting used to, she admits.
"Pigs are quite vocal creatures," said Sutherland, who sometimes wears ear plugs while at the farm.
Sutherland now finds pigs endearing.
"I like their curiosity. Initially, they have a fear of new places, but they are quick learners, and they can be so curious," she said.
Pigs, Sutherland said, are relatively intelligent and are very social creatures. Quickly after birth, they establish a hierarchy and settle into dominant or submissive roles, she said.
Still, "trying to get into a pig's mind is definitely not an easy thing. It would be so much easier if they could talk," joked Sutherland.
Because they can't, Sutherland and her colleagues must rely on other clues to understand how farming practices affect pigs. So far, measuring the level of cortisol in their blood is telling. By doing so, Sutherland and her team have found transporting pigs from farm to farm is one of the most stressful times in their lives, as well as weaning.
Farmers can lessen the stress of pigs during transport by reducing distractions, such as multiple colors and noise.
Sutherland and her team also are trying to produce a pheromone that smells like a nursing sow. It could be applied near baby pigs to reduce their stress during weaning, Sutherland said.
Paying attention to stress in farm animals, Sutherland points out, benefits farmers. Upset animals tend to eat less than happy animals and are more vulnerable to disease, she said.
Inside the dimly lit nursing area at the New Deal farm, Sutherland holds the little piglet only for a little while. Once its squeals grow louder, she returns it to its litter. Soon, the commotion in the nursery calms. The sows lay down, and their piglets climb over the massive bellies. Some pile atop each other and settle down for a nap.
"In my field," Sutherland said, "it pays not to get attached (to the pigs). But it's important to see them as animals with a personality.
"If we can improve their lives," she said, "that's a good thing."
At a Glance:" Being a pig isn't all mud and mess, as Texas Tech researcher and professor Mhairi Sutherland knows. She has worked with pigs in research for more than half a decade. Here's some of the knowledge she's amassed, at-a-glance:" The weight of a grown sow can vary from 300 to 600 pounds." Generally, on commercial farms, pigs' tails are snipped with a hot cauterizing iron or a clipper within one to three days of their birth. Through research, Sutherland and her colleagues have found snipping tails with cauterizing irons produces less stress in pigs than doing so with clippers. Snipping tails when pigs are young also causes less bleeding." Pigs hate the smell of rotten milk. They like the smell of chili. Sutherland and her colleagues discovered this through experiments. The ultimate aim: Produce a scent that attracts feral pigs, a growing problem for farmers, so a contraceptive can be applied to the females to prevent the massive spread of the animals, which can destroy crops within minutes." At one commercial pig farm in Kansas, where Sutherland once did research, roughly 1,000 pigs are weaned daily." Like dogs, pigs in groups maintain a strict social order. Some pigs will fight to establish dominance. "If you mix pigs that don't know each other, it's like WWF," joked Sutherland." A female pig that has not born a litter is called a gilt." Generally, domestic pigs are weaned at 2-3 weeks of age." An average-sized pig litter consists of 8 to 10 pigs.
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