The objective of this study was to describe characteristics of weaned piglet transport events that occurred between 2014 and 2018 using records provided by five Canadian swine companies. The dataset included records from 6203 transport events involving the transport of approximately 6.9 million piglets (4.1–7.9 kg) from 62 farm origin sites in Alberta, Ontario, or Saskatchewan, Canada. Most transport events ended at farms in Canada (71.3%), while the remaining transports delivered piglets to one of eight American states. The predominant trailer types used were Straightdeck (51.4%) and Potbelly (36.6%), but this did not reflect the number of piglets transported as Potbelly trailers have greater load capacity. Transport events most frequently involved loading piglets from one origin barn and delivering them to a single destination barn (78.1%). Only transport events involving export to the United States picked up piglets from, or delivered them to, more than one farm site. Most transport events had very short trip distances (median distance: 48.0 km; IQR: 497.0), but a large range in distances was observed (1.8–2931.2 km). Ambient temperature during these transport events ranged from -30.3–28.7 ◦C. Overall, less than 10% of transport events had mortality occur. The average in-transit mortality rate observed was 0.027%. However, instances of mortality over 1% did sporadically occur and could translate to considerable losses given the large load sizes common for piglets of this age (median load size: 1105 piglets; IQR: 1036 piglets). These data provide a better understanding of the interconnectedness of the Canadian swine industry as well as common transport practices which may inform future research on disease transmission in swine transport networks, and piglet welfare during transport.
Weaned piglet transport practices in Canada (full article)
