The farrowing crate is one of the very worst of factory farming's hidden horrors. Hundreds of thousands of Pregnant sows are confined for most of their lives in narrow individual stalls. No exercise or nesting is possible even though the urge for such behavior is strong. The crate is just inches wider and longer than the sows own body: for up to thirty-five days, every four or five months, she can do nothing but suckle her piglets and stare at a blank wall. The bars make it very difficult for the animals to stand up or lie down. This terrible frustration can turn into aggression: more than one-in-eight piglets are savaged to death by their own mothers. Limbs aching from inactivity, skin rubbed raw by the bars and their maternal instincts utterly frustrated, mother pigs suffer from stress, pain and psychological torture in the crate.



Millions of sows spend entire lifetimes in narrow steel crates parked like cars unable to turn or even lie down comfortably.



Many piglets are born into their mother's excrement. After that, they are confined to the tiny, barren "creep" area next to the cage - with nothing to do but suckle and fight over their mother's milk. By three weeks old wild piglets are normally found up to 30 metres from the sow, exploring their environment and trying out new foods - no such stimulation for these intelligent, curious little animals in the crate. After a month of confinement and misery, the piglets are "weaned", ie taken away to be fattened for slaughter. Weaning takes place months before it should naturally occur and the piglets, unused to solid food, suffer from scours - pitiful, wasting diarrhoea. They are then given a cocktail of drugs on a daily basis. Their mothers, meanwhile, are given just a few days before being reimpregnated, and starting the whole 16 week cycle again.

The farrowing crate is designed with one purpose only: to maximise the 'production' of pigs. All considerations of animal welfare are sacrificed to that goal. It is, therefore, not just an appalling practice in its own right, but a symbol of everything that is evil about factory farming.