Body condition scoring in sows is a practical welfare and production management tool that guides feeding decisions through gestation, lactation, and service. Systematic use of body condition scoring reduces metabolic disease, lameness, and reproductive failure.
Thin sows experience the overlapping welfare burden of nutritional stress, reduced immunity, impaired milk production, and higher lameness risk. Over-conditioned sows suffer shoulder sores from prolonged recumbency in crates and increased metabolic disease around farrowing. Systematic condition scoring — weekly during the last third of pregnancy and at weaning — enables intervention before welfare-relevant thresholds are crossed. Welfare-centred sow management treats condition scoring as a primary health monitoring tool, not an afterthought, and adjusts feeding allocations based on individual scores rather than group averages.