Gestation crate

A gestation crate, also known as a sow stall, is a metal enclosure in which a farmed sow used for breeding may be kept during pregnancy. A standard crate measures 6.6 ft x 2.0 ft (2 m x 60 cm).

Sow stalls contain no bedding material and are instead floored with slatted plastic, concrete or metal to allow waste to be efficiently collected below. This waste is then flushed into open-air pits known as lagoons. A few days before giving birth, sows are moved to farrowing crates where they are able to lie down, with an attached crate from which their piglets can nurse.

There were 5.36 million breeding sows in the United States as of 2016, out of a total of 50.1 million pigs. Most pregnant sows in the US are kept in gestation crates. The crates are banned for new installations only in Austria and Canada, so many sows are still confined there in pig breeding facilities. They are banned in the United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland and Sweden, and in nine states in the US (Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Oregon and Rhode Island). However, farrowing crates, in which female breeding pigs can be kept for up to five weeks, are not banned in the UK.

Opponents of the crates argue that they constitute animal abuse, while proponents say they are needed to prevent sows from fighting among themselves.