Quantitative analysis of the number of behavior repetitions in 7 hours/cage of piglets, from 21 to 35 days of age, kept in an environment with or without environmental enrichments (times of repetitions)

Contexts in source publication

Context 1

... that did not receive enrichments displayed higher degrees of activity (eating, drinking, active, inactive, smelling, and scratching activities) than those that received one of the enrichments provided (p = 0.06) (Table 2), having as a contributing factor the increase in inactive behavior, which corroborates with the study by Casal-Plana et al. (2017), that is justified by the redirection of the behavior when one does not have an environment with enrichment. ...

Context 2

... the experiment, inactivity behavior was prevalent in all treatments (Table 2). This observation is consistent with Broom and Fraser (2010), who explained that inactivity-related activities are essential for the species due to this evolutionary characteristic, since free-range animals that remained immobile for a longer time were less likely to be detected by the predators, besides conserving energy and making possible the repair of the synapses of the nervous system. ...

Context 3

... and agonistic behaviors did not display significative differences in frequency among the treatments (Table 2). These results diverge from those presented by Melotti et al. (2011), who observed that piglets had lower rates of aggression and spent less time fighting after environmental enrichment with substrates such as hay. ...

Context 4

... animals that had suspended rope as environmental enrichment presented higher rates (p = 0.01) of play behavior between them or with the objects provided in the pen (Table 2). This result corroborates with the study of Trickett et al. (2009), that evaluated the interaction of post-weaning piglets with two types of objects, suspended rope and wood block, and observed that the animals had more interaction with the suspended rope. ...