Prenatal stress produces anxiety prone female offspring and impaired maternal behaviour in the domestic pig.

Numerous studies have shown that prenatal stress (PNS) can have profound effects on postnatal well-being. Here, the domestic pig (Sus scrofa) was used to investigate PNS effects owing to the direct relevance for farm animal welfare and the developing status of the pig as a large animal model in translational research. Pregnant primiparous sows were exposed, in mid-gestation, to either a social stressor (mixing with unfamiliar conspecifics) or were kept in stable social groups.

Pre-natal stress amplifies the immediate behavioural responses to acute pain in piglets.

Pre-natal stress (PNS) or undernutrition can have numerous effects on an individual's biology throughout their lifetime. Some of these effects may be adaptive by allowing individuals to tailor their phenotype to environmental conditions. Here we investigated, in the domestic pig Sus scrofa, whether one possible consequence of a predicted adverse environment could be altered pain perception.

Early weaning results in less active behaviour, accompanied by lower 5-HT1A and higher 5-HT2A receptor mRNA expression in specific brain regions of female pigs.

In rodents and humans stressful events in early life e.g. maternal deprivation, can increase sensitivity to stress in later life.

The effect of confinement during lactation on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and behaviour of primiparous sows.

Commercial sows are typically confined in crates before and during parturition and remain there throughout lactation. In various animal species including non-lactating pigs, confinement over similar periods leads to adaptive changes in the HPA axis, consistent with chronic stress. To investigate evidence for chronic stress in lactating sows, primiparous sows (gilts) were kept in behaviourally confining crates with straw bedding (CS, n = 8) or without bedding (C, n = 8) or in larger strawed pens (PS, n = 16) between 5 days before parturition until 29 days postpartum (piglets were weaned on day 28).

Programming the offspring of the pig by prenatal social stress: neuroendocrine activity and behaviour.

This study provides evidence in the pig that stress experienced during gestation has long-lasting effects on offspring daughters, including their maternal behaviour. Thirty-six primiparous sows were divided into control and two groups that were stressed (by social mixing) during either the second (Mix 2) or third (Mix 3) trimester of pregnancy. We found detrimental effects of mixing on the mothers' growth, body lesions, and cortisol secretion, but did not observe any significant effects on reproductive parameters including birth weight.