In several episodes, leading welfare researchers explain the results they obtained within the international framework ‘FareWellDock’. This project investigates how to steer away from tail docking. Swedish and Danish researchers took a look at straw – does its use reduce the occurrence of tail biting?
Read more in Pig Progress.
From the article:
Tail docking is completely banned in Sweden, Finland and Switzerland.
Science suggests that lack of proper manipulable material is one of several major risk factors for tail biting.
A moderate amount of straw (150 g/pig/day) reduced the risk of injurious tail biting by more than two-fold, while docking seemed to be more effective as it reduced the risk by more than four-fold.
A combination of straw and increased space (1.2 m2 per pig) reduced the risk (of first occurrence) in undocked pigs to the same level as found in docked pigs kept under high stocking density (0.72 m2 per pig) without straw.
To provide a suitable outlet for exploratory behaviour under production conditions, materials have to be varied and complex, and are most effective when easily destroyed by chewing, or if they are edible.
Increasing the amount of straw from 10 to up to 400g/pig/day had multiple positive effects by progressively reducing the occurrence of tail injuries and stomach ulcers, increasing growth rate, increasing straw-directed behaviour, and reducing redirected behaviours towards other pigs.
Left-over straw may be a promising candidate method to screen for appropriate level of straw allocation.