Abstract During weaning, piglets experience abrupt maternal separation and changes in their social and physical environment. These changes often lead to significant stress that can reduce feed intake and growth, and increase undesirable behaviors such as aggression. Previous literature has shown that maternal stimuli and nutritional supplementation can improve post-weaning performance and behavior, however, their synergistic effects and the use of an artificial surrogate mother (SM) to provide maternal stimuli and nutritional supplementation has not been investigated. The objective of this study was to evaluate if a SM that provides weaned piglets with maternal stimuli and an electrolyte solution (BlueLite®) improves weaning piglets' performance and reduce the occurrence of undesired behavior. Weaned piglets (N = 134) were randomly assigned to either the control or the SM treatment. SM was equipped with four nipples, artificial leather, olfactory maternal stimulus (FerAppease®), and a nutritional electrolyte supplement to provide piglets with multiple maternal stimuli and nutritional supplementation. Piglets were housed in pens of 4 piglets in separate climate-controlled rooms to prevent exposing control piglets to maternal. SM was in the pen for the first 3 days post-weaning, and body weights were recorded at weaning, 3-, 7-, 14-, 21-, and 28-days post-weaning. Average daily gain (ADG) and average daily feed intake (ADFI) were calculated to assess performance. Behavioral data was collected through continuous video recordings during the treatment period and were analyzed using a scan-sampling technique at 1-minute intervals (12 hours per day, 36 hours per pen) to quantify the proportion of time spent in different behaviors. There was no significant effect of treatment on feeding (P = 0.22), drinking (P = 0.78), active (P = 0.91), lying (P = 0.89), aggression (P = 0.58), belly-nosing (P = 0.89) behaviors. The main effect of day was statistically significant for feeding (P 0.001), active (P = 0.002), aggressive (P = 0.006) behaviors, and overall interaction with the SM (P = 0.0001). The main effect of treatment on piglets’ weight gain and feed intake was also not statistically significant. Interaction with the SM increased between the first (1.54±0.02) and second day (3.28±0.04) and slightly decreased by day 3 (2.36±0.30). Overall, our results indicate that our SM did not alter weaned pig behavior or performance.
Aguilar et al. (2026) studied this question.