Farrowing Crates
What are 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.
Primary Industries Standing Committee, Model Code of Practice for the Welfare of Animals: Pigs, Clause 4.1.7 (as reproduced in the Handbook for the Model Code of Practice) ; RSPCA Australia Knowledgebase, "What are the animal welfare issues with farrowing crates for sows?" https://kb.rspca.org.au/knowledge-base/what-are-the-animal-welfare-issues-with-farrowing-crates-for-sows/ ; ScienceDirect Topics, "Farrowing Crates: an overview." https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/farrowing-crates ; Four Paws Australia, "Sow Stalls." https://www.four-paws.org.au/campaigns-topics/topics/farm-animals/sow-stalls ; Australian Pork Limited, "Best Practice Gilt Management for Fertility and Longevity" ; Queensland Government Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (now Department of Primary Industries), sow breeding and fertility cycle data ; The Pig Site, "Early Culling Linked to Higher Production Costs" ; Peer-reviewed comparative sow meat quality study, Animal Bioscience journal / PubMed
References
Photo: Shatabdi Chakrabarti / We Animals
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.
