Choice stalls research: more pigs per litter

At our last Nuffield meeting, Alan Stewart of Harper Adams University Collge gave an overview of recent research. There were a couple of interesting points on using choice stalls:

Sows were more comfortable in choice stalls rather than stalls that were shut outside feeding time, meaning submissive sows had to lay in the dung passage

The reproductive performance of sows in choice stalls was 1.5/pigs per litter higher