Establishing Bedding Requirements on Trailers Transporting Market Weight Pigs in Warm Weather
Simple Summary Transport is an inevitable process in the modern swine industry. Trailers transporting pigs are bedded with straw, wood shavings, corn stover, or sand. Excess bedding may detrimentally affect the micro-environment inside the trailer during warm weather and in turn negatively affect animal based measures and transport losses. These experiments aim to determine the amount of bedding that is ideal for market weight pig transport during warm weather. Abstract During warm weather, incorrect bedding levels on a trailer transporting market weight pigs may result in heat stress, fatigue, and death. Two experiments were conducted in June and July of 2011; Experiment 1 used 80 loads (n = 13,887 pigs) to determine the effects of two bedding levels (3 (68.1 kg) or 6 bags (136.2 kg) of wood shavings/trailer [each bag contained 22.7 kg, 0.2 m3]) on pig measures (surface temperature, vocalizations, slips and falls, and stress signs). Experiment 2 used 131 loads (n = 22,917 pigs) to determine the effects of bedding (3 vs. 6 bags) on transport losses (dead, sum of dead- and euthanized- on arrival; non-ambulatory, sum of fatigued and injured; total transport losses sum of dead and non-ambulatory). Bedding did not affect surface temperature, vocalizations, or slips and falls (p = 0.58, p = 0.50, and p = 0.28, respectively). However, pigs transported on 6 bags/trailer had 1.5% more stress signs than pigs transported on 3 bags/trailer (p < 0.01). No differences were observed between bedding levels for non-ambulatory, dead, or total transport losses (p = 0.10, p = 0.67, and p = 0.34, respectively). Within the context of these experiments, bedding level did not result in deleterious effects on pig measures or transport losses. However, using more bedding may result in higher costs to the industry. Therefore, 3 bags of bedding/trailer may be used when transporting market weight pigs during warm weather in the Midwestern U.S.
Effects of pre-slaughter short-term factors on pork quality

We examined the effects of pre-slaughter short-term factors including season of the year, duration of transportation and lairage time, as well as sex of pigs, on pork quality. Meat samples were collected from 590 pigs (females, entire and castrated males) that were slaughtered in a commercial abattoir in Greece over a 15-month period. Meat quality parameters pH, colour, drip loss, cooking loss, Warner–Bratzler shear values and sarcomere length were measured on the longissimus dorsi. DNA was isolated from blood samples and the frequency of the recessive halothane gene mutation HALn was determined. The results demonstrated that pork quality with respect to pH and L* values was normal in 93.9% of the samples, with 5.1% of samples classified as PSE (pale, soft and exudative) and 1.0% as DFD (dark, firm and dry). Duration of transportation was critical: brief and long transfers had the ability to impair meat quality. A lairage time of 2–4 h before slaughter was adequate when the pigs were free of HALn and the climatic conditions were not extreme. Season of the year was a very important factor, with significant variations recorded in meat-quality parameters between winter and summer months. Finally, the sex of the animals was responsible for differences in meat quality, but these differences were small and unlikely to be identified by the consumers.

The role of the sympatho‐adrenal system in the control of sweating in the ox (Bos taurus).
Muto (1916) reported that intravenous pilocarpine administration produced marked sweating in the calf, and concluded that the sweat glands of the ox were cholinergic. Ferguson & Dowling (1955) observed the formation of sweat in response to intradermal injections of adrenaline, and Taneja (1959) showed that Dibenamine inhibited this response and, in a hot environment, reduced the moisture loss from the skin. Findlay & Jenkinson (1964) confirmed that intradermal injections of adrenaline stimulated the sweat glands, and Ingram, McLean & Whittow (1963) showed that intravenous adrenaline injections markedly increased cutaneous moisture loss which they attributed to sweat gland activity. From their results on the effects of hypothalamic heating on cutaneous moisture loss Ingram et al. (1963) suggested that the control of sweat secretion in the ox was similar to that described by Evans (1957) for the horse, whose sweat glands have no sudomotor nerve fibres and are normally controlled by increases in plasma-adrenaline concentration or increases in cutaneous blood flow. The experiments described here were undertaken to examine the threshold response of bovine sweat glands to intradermal injection of drugs, to examine the role of the sympathetic nervous system and assess the importance of the adrenal medulla in the control of thermal sweating in the ox, and to study the effects of drugs with specific autonomic blocking effects on sweat gland activity. A preliminary report of this work has been published (Findlay & Robertshaw, 1964).