Relationship of feeding behavior indicators with growth intensity of modern selection pigs

Changes in foraging behavior (FBH) are not easily quantified. Electronic automated recording of behavioral parameters helps to detect individuals with specific physical or behavioral characteristics and serves to accumulate data under specific conditions. Based on data obtained through control fattening stations, we analyzed the relationship of feeding behavior parameters with productivity (growing and fattening periods totaling 100 days), selected slaughter parameters and meat quality of hybrids of intensively growing young pigs (DхLхLW, hogs, n=34). It was found that the scatter of ADG, ADFI, FCR, SY, pH1 was insignificant, TDP and FR - average, at the same time individual FBH parameters (NVD, FPV, TPV), as well as BF1 and BF2 had a rather strong scatter of values. ADG-ADFI (r=0.81, pЈ0.001), FCR-ADFI (r=0.71, pЈ0.001) were the most highly correlated. FCR has no direct relationship with ADG (r=0.17, p>0.05). In pigs, FPV and FR are the two FBH indices most strongly and positively related to ADFI, ADG and body weight. It is noteworthy that feed intake rate (FR) in our studies had a medium positive trend of correlation not only with ADFI (r=0.37, p=0.03) but also with FCR (r=0.29, p=0.09). Slaughter yield (SY) had a medium positive relationship with ADG (r=0.29, p=0.09), ADFI (r=0.29, p=0.09), FCR (r=0.29, p=0.09), but also with the amount of feed consumed per 1 FPV visit (r=0.40, p=0.02) and the duration of one TPV visit (r=0.37, p=0.03). BF1 had positive correlations with ADG (r=0.29, p=0.10), ADFI (r=0.39, p=0.02), FCR (r=0.32, p=0.06). BF2 had no such correlations with the above parameters of lifetime evaluation. Pigs of modern selection have high ADG and FR, but it is necessary to take into account other factors affecting FCR, as the lowest conversion was observed in animals with average ADG and FR. Our data indicate that the increase in slaughter yield is achieved to a greater extent in animals with good feed intake, which also leads to higher ADG. Thus, the data obtained allowed us to evaluate the influence of the studied FBH parameters on the lifetime and post-slaughter performance. This tool allows targeted monitoring of pig welfare, as well as collecting data to assess the efficiency of fattening, studying individual components of feed and in general the diet on the efficiency of consumption and growth of pigs, the influence of environmental conditions and other parameters, which will be taken into account in future work in the accumulation of accounting data.