EFFECT OF DURATION OF REWARD UPON OPERANT HEAT DEMAND OF PIGLETS RECEIVING MICROWAVE OR INFRARED HEAT
In the conduct of a four-period trial, forty-eight newly weaned piglets were randomly allocated to three treatments: (1) continuous infrared (CI), (2) operant infrared (OI), and (3) operant microwave (OM). The piglets subjected to the operant procedure initially underwent a learning phase, in which activation of a microswitch was associated with the delivery of heat. During the experimental phase, the duration of heat supply for both OI and OM was adjusted to 2, 4, 6 or 8 min according to a Latin square design. Each heat delivery interval lasted 48 h. The piglets responded to increasing duration of heat reward, for both OI and OM conditions, by decreasing (P < 0.05) the number of rewarded activations of the microswitch. It was estimated that for each increase of 1 min in duration of the reward, the piglets voluntarily decreased the number of rewarded activations by approximately 0.32 (P > 0.05) and 0.19 (P < 0.05) activations per hour, for the OI and OM conditions, respectively. Each minute increase in duration of the reward was also associated with a decrease of 1.32 min h−1 (P > 0.05) and 1.39 min h−1 (P < 0.05) of supplemental heat from OI and OM, respectively. There were no significant differences (P > 0.05) in total weight gain and feed/gain between treatments. Key words: Operant, thermoregulation, piglets, microwave