Providing Environmental Enrichment Offers a Good Start to Reduce Risk of Tail Biting

A research scientist with the Prairie Swine Centre suggests providing pigs with rooting materials they can chew will reduce the risk of tail biting. Tail biting is an abnormal behavior where one pig chews or bites the tail of a pen mate, raising  the risk for reduced weight gain, increased carcass condemnations, higher risk of disease and even mortality.Dr. Jen-Yun Chou, a research scientist with the Prairie Swine Centre, says we consider tail biting to be a type of redirected foraging behavior so while there are many risk factors a key one is the absence or availability of rooting material.

Quote-Dr. Jen-Yun Chou-Prairie Swine Centre:

Every single farm is different. You can provide different enrichments, as we call them. That will reduce some of your risk factors for tail biting.But at the same time, watch your feeding, feeder space, watch your ventilation, watch your air quality and also watch out for your stocking density. There are a lot of things that people can do in the barn so, whenever you do have an issue of tail biting, you really have to ask yourself are you putting yourself at a higher risk or how do you lower that risk?

In a Canadian kind of situation, we would like to see some, for example, ropes. You have to understand what pigs like and what do they, when they forage, what are the traits they're looking for? They are looking for something they can chew; they are looking for something that they can destroy, destructible and ideally it's edible, so they can ingest, because that goes back to they are omnivores. They like to pick up things to chew.

So then having ropes, if you can afford to have a tiny bit of sawdust or a tiny bit of chopped straw or anything that they can root, or if you have a jute sack, they can really destroy, they can pull apart and then they can eat it, then I think that's a good start.

Dr. Chou says when the pigs engage in tail biting there is something wrong in the herd, whether it's health or the environment or airflow so you really have to pay attention to these details.