Commercial sow welfare encompasses the entire productive lifespan of breeding females, with housing, management, and culling decisions all affecting lifetime wellbeing.
Sow welfare across the productive lifespan involves the cumulative impact of repeated reproductive cycles, housing conditions, and the physical demands of gestation and lactation. Lameness develops from the combination of hard flooring, inadequate nutrition, and musculoskeletal strain of repeated pregnancies. Lame sows experience chronic pain that affects their ability to access food and water in group housing, creating secondary nutritional problems. The shift from gestation stalls to group housing improves welfare substantially but requires management attention to prevent social conflict. Sows culled prematurely for lameness or reproductive failure represent welfare failures - animals whose bodies have been exhausted by production systems before their natural lifespan would end.