Skip to main content
. 2014 Nov 10;9(11):e110859. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0110859

Figure 1. Acute postnatal heat stress (HS) alters temperature indices and feed intake over the 24 h treatment period.

Figure 1

A) Rectal temperature increased during postnatal HS (P<0.001) and a postnatal treatment by time interaction was also detected (P<0.001). B) Respiration rate presented as breaths per minute (bpm) was elevated as a result of postnatal HS (P<0.001) in addition to the detection of a postnatal treatment by time interaction (P<0.01). C) Skin temperature was increased in pigs subject to postnatal HS compared to thermal neutral [30] counterparts (P<0.001) in addition to detection of a postnatal treatment by time interaction (P<0.001). A gestational by postnatal treatment interaction was observed in skin temperature (P = 0.05) whereby gestational treatments exposed to HS during the second half of gestation had higher skin temperature (0.5°C) under HS conditions but lower skin temperature under TN conditions (0.3°C) compared to HSTN and TNTN gestational treatments. D) Cumulative feed intake was reduced (P<0.01) in HS pigs compared to their TN counterparts. TN pigs gained weight while HS pigs lost weight over the acute HS period. No gestational effect was observed for feed intake or weight gain parameters (P>0.1). E) The difference between rectal and skin temperatures is elevated in pigs from TNHS and HSHS vs. TNTN and HSTN treatments at 16 h (P = 0.1) and 20 h (P = 0.01) of HS. # P<0.1; *P<0.05. Data shown represent the LS-mean ± SEM of n = 6 pigs per postnatal treatment per gestational treatment.