Neonatal piglet mortality rates of 10-15% in intensive systems represent a significant welfare burden from crushing, starvation, and disease that better farrowing management can substantially reduce.
Neonatal piglet welfare encompasses both the quantity of deaths and the quality of the dying process. Crushed piglets may survive injury for extended periods before death. Starving piglets from teat competition experience prolonged hypoglycemia. Hypothermic piglets suffer before dying from cold. These welfare events occur at high rates in commercial production as an accepted cost of doing business. Management investments that reduce neonatal mortality — appropriate temperature management, modified farrowing environments, adequate heat lamps and creep areas — simultaneously improve welfare and production outcomes, creating economic incentives aligned with welfare.