Shorter truck trips are more stressful to market hogs than longer truck rides, according to a study recently published in the Journal of Animal Science.
The reason? Pigs need time to recover from the stress of loading before they get stressed again when they disembark, says Prof. Michael Ellis, at the University of Illinois’s Urbana-Champaign campus.
Another stress factor is floor space. Overcrowding is stressful, but pigs that have too much space are thrown around as the livestock truck moves. University researchers found that U.S. market pigs on average require five square feet each.