Lactating sows have the highest nutritional demands of any stage of the production cycle. Inadequate feeding leads to excessive body condition loss, prolonged wean-to-oestrus intervals, and reduced welfare across multiple parities.
Sows confined in farrowing crates cannot perform natural foraging or postural behaviours, creating a motivational deficit compounded by nutritional stress. Poor body condition increases lameness, skin lesions, and aggression at regrouping. Welfare-conscious producers provide ad libitum feeding from farrowing, high-fibre diets to increase satiety, ample clean water, and transition to loose-farrowing systems where possible. Regular body condition scoring guides individual feeding adjustments.