A descriptive study of weaned piglet transport practices in Alberta, Ontario, and Saskatchewan, Canada between 2014 and 2018.

Abstract

Canadian transport practices for shipments of newly weaned piglets are not well-described despite documentation requirements for those conducting the movement of these animals. The objective of this study was to describe the characteristics of weaned piglet transport events that occurred between 2014 and 2018 using records provided by five Canadian swine companies. Following cleaning and validation, the dataset included records from 6203 transport events involving the transport of approximately 6.9 million piglets (5.7kg, 4.1-7.9kg) from 62 origin sites in Alberta, Ontario, or Saskatchewan, Canada. This represents approximately 4.7% of the piglets estimated to have been weaned in Canada between 2014 and 2018, and 1.7% of sow farms in Canada according to 2016 National census data. Most transport events ended at farms in Canada (71.3%), while the remaining 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: 48.0km; IQR: 497.0), but a marked range was observed (1.8-2931.2km). Average daily temperature data matched to the transport records by origin and destination location demonstrated ambient environmental conditions during these transport events ranged from -30.3-28.7°C. Overall, less than 10% of transport events had mortality occur. Comparable with other observational studies documenting weaned piglet mortality, the average in-transit mortality rate observed over the multiple seasons, companies, trip distances, and other characteristics in this dataset 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 and size (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, or piglet welfare during transport. Additionally, variables that were not present in this dataset that would further strengthen these types of investigations are highlighted (e.g., space allowance).