Principles of Body Condition Scoring in Swine

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- Maintaining good body condition throughout the life of a sow is critical for animal welfare and for optimal productivity of your herd.

Sows that are too thin will have health and quality of life problems.

Sows that are too fat will struggle to perform their job and piglet rearing.

Hello, I'm Dr. Elizabeth Hines, the Penn State Extension Swine Specialist.

And in this video, we are going to discuss the principles of body condition scoring in swine.

When evaluating the body condition of a sow, you should focus on the face, shoulders, pelvis, and topline to determine the amount of body fat on the sow.

From this evaluation, you will assign scores to animals based on a scale, using either a three-point or five-point scale.

We will use a five-point scale for this video.

The amount of body fat increases as you move up the scale from one to five.

To help with body condition scoring, let's look at how pigs put on fat.

Pigs generally accumulate fat from the front to back.

They gain weight first in the jowl, shoulder, and topline.

As they put on more weight, the ribs, flank, belly, and hips fill out, become rounder, and lose visual muscle tone.

When you evaluate body condition, you will look and feel for key bone structures.

As swine lose weight in the pelvic area, the tailhead and the ilium or hook of the pelvic girdle become more prominent.

As they lose more weight, flesh will increasingly leave the hindquarters, as well as start to fall away from the flanks, ribs, and scapular bones, or the shoulder.

Finally, under extreme weight loss, fat will be noticeably absent from the jowl, leaving sharp jawlines and facial bones.

Visibility of ribs, spinal processes, and hipbones are only observed in pigs with a body condition score of one or emaciated and is inappropriate for any stage of production.

Body condition score increases as the flesh of the pelvis increases, creating a rounder appearance.

You can also visually appraise the angle of the vertebrae.

Here are the two extremes.

On the left, you can see the sharp angle of the poorly conditioned sow, which should be classified as one.

On the right, you can see the shallow angle of an overly conditioned sow, which would be classified as five.

The prominence of the vertebrae is a measure of the amount of subcutaneous fat and muscle along the loin.

Now that you have a better understanding of pig structure for body condition scoring, let's put it into practice.

Begin by examining your sow as a whole.

This will give you a general idea of the animal's body condition score.

Next, evaluate the condition on the face.

An animal with a very thin face has a lower body condition score.

Then evaluate the prominence of the shoulders.

An animal with ideal body condition score, you will be able to feel the shoulders, but they won't be visually prominent.

Next, evaluate the prominence of the hip and tailbones.

Thin animals will have a prominent tailhead, while fat animals will have a rounded tailhead.

Finally, evaluate the topline.

From behind the shoulders to the hips should be a straight line.

An animal that is straight in front of the shoulders to the hips is too big.

An animal that sinks in at the flank is too thin.

Assign the body condition score based on the results of your examination.

Animals with a score of one are emaciated.

You can easily see and feel their ribs, back, hipbones, and pinbones.

Animals with a score of two are thin, but their shape feels and looks smooth.

Animals with a score of three are ideal.

Their shape is smooth, but structured.

Animals with a score of four are rounded.

You can't see their bones.

You can only feel them with firm pressure.

And animals with a score of five are overconditioned.

You can't see or feel their bones.

Ideally, you want to have animals that have a score of around three at all times.

Falling too far outside of the ideal range is what leaves to reproductive complications.

This means that regular body condition score of your sows can help you manage nutritional needs and reproductive performance as your sows move through each stage of gestation, lactation, weaning, and breeding.

Body condition scoring is a useful tool for evaluating herd health and productivity.

The more animals you evaluate, the better you will become at determining condition, welfare, and productivity of your sows.

This takes practice.

The more you practice body condition scoring in your herd, the better off your sows and herd performance will be.