Farrowing Crates

Last updated 4 September 2020

When a sow is close to giving birth, it is standard industry practice to move her from group/loose housing into a farrowing crate. A farrowing crate is a small metal cage in which sows are confined while they give birth and nurse their piglets until they are moved to ‘weaner’ pens. 

A sow confined to a farrowing crate.

A farrowing crate affords sows little room to do anything; generally they can take one step forward or backward or lay on the concrete floor so their piglets can nurse from them, but they can’t turn around. 

The farrowing sheds can house up to hundreds of female pigs with their babies and are touted by the industry as a necessity to keep mother pigs from crushing their offspring (‘overlay’). The reality is that constraining female pigs in cages reduces the amount of space a pig farm takes up and allows an operator to maximise sow and piglet numbers, which maximises profits.

The legally accepted amount of space for sows in farrowing crates is 0.5 meters wide x 2 meters long. Sows will be kept here for approximately 6 weeks until her piglets are weaned, at which point the sow is re-impregnated, and this exploitative cycle begins again.

Evidence gathered by activists shows farrowing sheds full of injured, sickly, dying, or dead piglets (often in their crates next to their mothers) and injured female pigs. Piglets have been found crushed underneath their mothers, undermining the ostensible purpose of farrowing crates.  The sows have a lot of trouble standing up or lying down due to injuries and the weakness of their muscles, so even when they lie down on top of one of their young, they are often unable to get back up, and they’re unable to move away from their piglets to find a safe place to lie down