A case for size and shape scaling for understanding nutrient use in breeding sows and growing pigs

New Visual Image Analysis technologies now allow the hitherto unattainable measurement of animal size and shape. Knowledge of size and shape (and volume) in addition to weight gives new dimensions to pig description. Sow body condition, and consequent nutrient requirement, can be directly and objectively determined for the first time since weight was questioned as an adequate datum upon which to base sow feeding requirements. Relationships could now be drawn for a more direct determination of fitness for slaughter, and of nutrient requirements; in the latter case evidently for maintenance but, on reflection, also for growth. So familiar has the scale of weight become that it is ill appreciated that weight is often used not only for its own sake but rather as an indirect estimation of size and shape. This paper examines the value of the estimation of size and shape for animal description in relation to nutrient use; if not to replace weight entirely, then at least to augment it. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.