Abstract
BackgroundStraw is a beneficial enrichment material for pigs, shown to improve welfare through reducing tail biting. Straw has previously been identified as one of the means of how to raise pigs without tail docking, through improving natural exploratory behaviour. Straw has however been linked to poor pen hygiene, making farmers reluctant to use straw and has largely not been implemented in commercial farming worldwide. Straw is a beneficial enrichment material for pigs, shown to improve welfare and reduce abnormal behaviour such as tail biting.ResultsThis study investigates the impact of straw on pig and pen hygiene in pens with partly slatted floor in three grower and four finishing pig batches on five commercial farms (2329 pigs, 211 pens) in Sweden which were providing straw daily. Each batch was divided into two treatments; Control: 50-600 g straw/pen/day based on the farm normal straw ration; and Extra straw; (=doubled Control ration). The pens were scored based on cleanliness of the pigs, solid and slatted pen floor every second week. The pig and pen hygiene were mostly scored as clean in both treatments, overall around 1% of the observations were considered dirty/soiled.ConclusionsAs very few pens or pigs were considered dirty, it was concluded that straw provision is possible without risking poor pig and pen hygiene. Few observations in this study were considered dirty regardless of amount of straw that was provided, and had likely to do with other factors in the production rather than straw ration. These results implies that straw could be used in partly slatted pens in order to improve pig environment but more research is needed to quantify the impact of other external factors related to climate (e.g. temperature, humidity, velocity).
Highlights
Straw is a beneficial enrichment material for pigs, shown to improve welfare through reducing tail biting
Several studies have investigated the effect of straw amount on the level of tail biting on both research farms [3, 4] and in commercial settings [5, 6]
The amount of straw provided in this study had no effect on the hygiene scoring of the pen floor or pen hygiene previous studies show effect on behaviour and tail lesions
Summary
Straw is a beneficial enrichment material for pigs, shown to improve welfare through reducing tail biting. Straw has previously been identified as one of the means of how to raise pigs without tail docking, through improving natural exploratory behaviour. Straw is a beneficial enrichment material for pigs, shown to improve welfare and reduce abnormal behaviour such as tail biting. One reason why straw provision has not been implemented is the farmer opinion that straw may block the slatted flooring, manure handling system and stack mired straw in pens, disturbing the pen environment [7,8,9]. In a survey among Swedish farmers using straw it was considered that blockage of slats and manure handling was the most common reason for not increasing straw rations problems in the manure handling system were quite rarely reported [6]. In practice straw was not reported to be associated with increased need of manual cleaning [5] which has previously been proposed
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