Teeth wear of piglets in lactation phase: performance and injuries / Desgaste dentário de leitões em fase de lactação: aspectos de desempenho e lesões

ABSTRACT

Piglets are born with a total of eight teeth and on the second day of life, teeth wear management is carried out to avoid lesions on the sows' ceilings and on the faces of the piglets. For this, an electric wearer is used that only wears the apex of the teeth. In this experiment, a comparison of twelve litters divided into a control group (CG) was performed, which the intact teeth were kept; with the management of tooth wear and treatment group (TG),. The animals were followed from the first day of life until weaning. The weighing was carried out on the respective days of life second, seventh, fourteenth and twenty-first. It was observed that the fights between piglets and for the ceilings did not present significant difference, on the other hand the injuries caused by the teeth and the dirt injuries had significant difference with greater presence in the group without wear. In the comparison of the piglets’ daily weight gain, there was noted that no significant difference between two groups was observed, which can state that the non-wear of the teeth does not interfere in the daily weight gain, however it was concluded that the animals without wear (CG) had a higher incidence of dirt lesions.