National Pig Centre
Genetics | Reproduction | Behaviour | Nutrition | Health & Welfare | Productivity | Food Integrity | Environmental Impact
The National Pig Centre is the UK’s largest and most advanced facility for research into pig nutrition, behaviour, welfare & health, and production systems.
In partnership with
The Centre is unique in the UK, housing both indoor and outdoor research pig herds on a commercial scale. This allows for comparisons across both production systems to support all UK pig production.
The Centre has been designed to perform:
- Nutrition trials from farrow to finish, with capabilities to provide specific diets both for replicate pens of pigs and for individual pigs within a group
- Evaluation of different housing and management systems, including indoor vs outdoor production systems and comparison of farrowing systems: Conventional crates vs loose farrowing systems
- Water preference or water-based treatment trials.
Additional features include:
- CCTV throughout the whole facility for 24/7 monitoring of pig behaviour, welfare and farrowing assessments
- Flexi-penning for flexibility with trial design
- Dissection facilities for tissue collection and a laboratory for sample processing
- Ultrasound scanner for collection of in utero measurements
- Conference facilities
Impact
Studies carried out by researchers are maximising animal welfare, productivity and profitability and informing the precision management of pigs, delivering greater efficiency through improved sow reproduction, higher piglet survival, better feed efficiency, improved health and enhanced social behaviour.
Supporting the Grand Challenges facing livestock food production:
Climate Smart Food Systems
Resource Efficiency & Precision Nutrition
Health & Welfare Management
Click to view and download the full brochure
Assessing the resilience of the UK pig industry
PigSustain is using a multi-disciplinary, integrated systems approach to model and assess the resilience of the UK pig industry to ensure any future intensification is balanced with improved animal health & welfare.
Smart system approaches for climate resilient livestock production
ClimatePig is integrating local weather information and precision farming technology to improve on-farm climate services and technology integration, ensuring future outdoor pig production is sustainable and resilient to climate variability and change.
