Glossary
Farrowing Crates
A metal-barred crate used to confine a female breeding pig around the time she gives birth and while nursing her piglets.
The crate's widespread use in intensive pig farming is primarily driven by economics, it minimises the floor space and labour required per sow, allowing more sows and piglets to be housed within a shed.
Industry suggests the use of farrowing crates as necessary to prevent sows from accidentally crushing their piglets and uses terms like 'piglet protection pen'. This claim does not hold up under scrutiny: piglets are still crushed inside farrowing crates.
Similar in size to a sow stall but slightly narrower, the crate allows a sow to stand up and take a step forward or backward, but not to turn around. Sows are typically moved into a farrowing crate around a week before giving birth and remain confined there for up to six weeks per reproductive cycle. Weaning triggers a return to fertility within four to six days, and she is remated almost immediately, meaning there is little to no unconfined time between one cycle ending and the next beginning.
A sow is kept only as long as she remains sufficiently productive, and is typically culled once her performance declines, often after around two years and five litters ('parity' refers to the number of litters a sow has had), against a natural pig lifespan of up to 15 years. The most common reasons for culling are reproductive failure and lameness. Once culled, a sow's meat is sold as "cull sow meat", a distinct, lower-value category generally destined for processed products like sausage and bacon rather than sold as standard pork.
Sow Stalls
A metal-barred cage used to individually confine a female breeding pig during part of her pregnancy. A standard sow stall measures just 2 metres long and 60 centimetres wide, only enough space for the sow to stand or lie down; she cannot turn around and can take no more than a single step forward or backward. Stalls are typically floored with bare concrete or slats, with no bedding.
Sow stalls are used to prevent aggression between group-housed pregnant sows and to allow individual monitoring of feed intake. They are distinct from farrowing crates, a similarly restrictive crate used around the time of birth and while piglets are nursing, and mating stalls, used during artificial insemination.
Photo: Shatabdi Chakrabarti / We Animals
Animally seeks to inform and educate the public on the hard-hitting realities of animal exploitation, so people can look, learn, and choose compassion over cruelty.
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