Performance measured in pigs with pneumonia and housed in different environments

During an investigation of poor growth performance, rate of weight gain and feed efficiency were studied in pigs with pneumonia. During the study, pigs either were housed in an improved environment or remained at their home farm. In both environments, rate of gain tended to decrease in association with increasing severity of pneumonia. When pigs with similar extent of lung lesions were compared, growth performance of pigs housed in the improved environment was better than that of pigs on the home farm. However, growth performance of pigs with pneumonia affecting greater than 20% of lung tissue was equally poor in either environment. When type of housing and extent of pneumonia were included in a model for analysis of variance, housing had a highly significant (P = 0.003) effect on rate of gain, and pneumonia had a nonsignificant effect.