Behavioral and physiological evaluation of sows raised in outdoors systems in the Brazilian semiarid region.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the biochemical, behavioral, and physiological parameters in pregnant sows of native and improved crossbreeds reared within a thermally stressful outdoors system. Twenty pregnant sows of two different genetic groups (native and improved lineage) were used in this research, all animals were distributed in a completely randomized design. The behavioral evaluation was organized in subdivided plots, the sub-plots were the four periods of the day (early morning, morning, afternoon, and night), and the evaluation of physiological parameters were in three periods of the day (9:00 A.