Many factors, such as the environment, diet constituents, feed allowance, boredom, access to waterers, age, season of the year and the stage of the breeding cycle can influence the water needs of the pig. Some of these factors are listed in Table 2. Quantifying water consumption is a perplexing problem. Questions have been raised as to whether pigs will overconsume water. Such feelings can increase the water intake several fold over requirements.
Water consumed above requirement is eliminated as urine.
However, overconsumption does waste water and increases the amount, and volume of slurry produced. That is, a pig consuming 2 kg of feed per day will consume at least 4.5 l of water per day. The extra amount needed has not been well defined since water disappearance can be greatly affected by wastage. Also, water wastage was dramatically reduced. This, in turn, is a benefit in that manure storage requirements are decreased.