Effect of local anesthesia on weight gain of pre-weaning piglets submitted to castration

Abstract

The policies of welfare on animal production have been expanded to improve the animal needsand match the demands of the consumer market. Castration represents a questionable welfarefactor related to pig production. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of theuse of local anesthesia before castration on productive performance in pre-weaning piglets,assessed by weight gain. Animals were divided into two treatments: 1) castration without localanesthesia (SURG; n = 52) and 2) castration after intra-testicular local anesthesia (SURG+LA;n = 52) when animals were three to seven days old. Piglets were weighed before (W0) and atseven (W1) and 14 days (W2) after orchiectomy, when they were weaned. Statistical analysiswas performed by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by Student-NewmanKeuls multiple comparison test to investigate differences between groups. There were nodifferences in Weight (W2) and weight gain at weaning between SURG+LA animals comparedto SURG animals (3.57 ± 0.60 kg and 3.74 ± 0.71 kg, respectively; p = 0.17). According to theexperimental conditions of this study, local anesthesia before castration of piglets does notaffect weight gain at weaning, warranting further investigation following the effect of localanesthesia prior to castration until the slaughtering phase.