Pre-Weaning Mortality in Pig-Causes and Management

Although the above data indicate that preweaning mortality is attributed to very discrete causes, in reality piglets typically die from an interaction of several possible causes of death. For instance, research has shown that small piglets are more susceptible to cold and therefore will lie more closely to their dam to obtain warmth. In this situation it is easy to see that a piglet such as this may be more likely to become crushed due to its proximity to its dam. Similarly, piglets that miss a meal due to being sick, injured, outcompeted at the udder, or simply sleeping through a nursing bout, can enter an irreversible spiral in which they become weaker, miss the next meal, and so on until finally they starve to death. Therefore, although the cause of death may be listed as ‘starvation’, in reality it was a combination of size, ability to maintain a constant thermal status, a loud farrowing environment (possibly responsible for the pig missing the nursing bout), and pathogens in the environment that all contributed to the pigs death. Because of these complex interactions surrounding almost all cases of pre-weaning mortality, pre-weaning mortality has continued to hover around 10% for many years.