The transition between pig production stages — from sow to nursery to finishing — involves multiple welfare disruptions that accumulate to affect overall production cycle welfare quality.
Pig welfare across the full production cycle is affected not just by individual stage housing quality but by the cumulative welfare cost of multiple transitions between production stages. Each regrouping triggers aggression and hierarchy fighting, each new environment imposes learning demands and stress. Systems that minimize unnecessary social disruptions by maintaining stable pen compositions across stages provide substantially better welfare continuity even when individual stage conditions are equivalent. Welfare assessment that considers the full production cycle rather than individual stages captures this important dimension.