Prenatal Stress in Pigs: Experimental Approaches and Field Observations

Abstract

Prenatal stress can affect the offspring's behaviour, physiology, and immune parameters. This paper summarises and discusses experimental and field studies on prenatal maternal stress in pigs. Often, elevated maternal corticosteroid concentrations during gestation are used to model prenatal stress. We used prolonged oral administration of cortisol (hydrocortisone acetate, HCA) to pregnant sows, which resulted in elevated maternal plasma and salivary cortisol concentrations. This treatment induced elevated fetal basal and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)-induced plasma cortisol concentrations, as demonstrated by a pilot study. Postnatally, it reduced birth weight of the piglets, and resulted in more live born piglets and higher preweaning mortality. In addition, it reduced the female offspring's salivary cortisol response to ACTH, and it enhanced the piglets’ novelty-induced locomotion and vocalisations, and the piglets were more aggressive in a social test. Some of these effects depended on the period of gestation during which maternal cortisol concentrations were elevated, and on the sex of the offspring. These results demonstrate that piglet physiology and behaviour can indeed be affected when the mother has elevated cortisol concentrations during gestation. Regular mixing of pregnant sows with unfamiliar sows during the last third of gestation did not affect maternal salivary cortisol concentrations. Also, it did not affect the piglets’ performance, behaviour, adrenocortical response to ACTH, or wound healing. Regular mixing of pregnant sows during the last third of gestation did not affect the piglets’ characteristics as studied in these experiments. However, performance and behaviour of piglets were highly influenced by the social rank of their mother during gestation. Our studies have demonstrated that piglets can be affected by elevated maternal cortisol concentrations during fetal development and by social rank of the pregnant sow during gestation.

Key words

prenatal stress - pig - fetus - pregnancy - cortisol - HPA-axis - behaviour - social rank

References

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1 The experimental farm also bred pigs for commercial purposes. All sows that were inseminated and that delivered a litter of piglets during the study period were included in the study.

2 All sows used in the experiments of [Kranendonk et al., 2005, 2006a, 2006b, 2007] were of the same breed, and were housed on the same farm.

3 In the studies described in the present paper, treatments did not elicit such high glucocorticoid concentrations in the sows that would cause preterm labour. In addition, treatments were terminated at least 5 days prior to the expected parturition date, in order to avoid possible preterm parturition.

Correspondence