Abstract
Exploratory behaviour is an essential part of the behavioural repertoire of pigs. Providing pigs with a rooting area filled with appropriate material enables such behaviour and is therefore considered to improve animal welfare. Managing the hygiene of a rooting area, however, is often challenging when pigs use it also for elimination. Mixing corn pellets into the rooting material could increase use and exploration while reducing elimination behaviour. To investigate this hypothesis, we constructed rooting areas filled with compost produced from garden waste in four pens on a commercial organic farm. We compared two experimental pens (E) with rooting areas filled with compost, in which we mixed 2 kg of corn pellets every morning, with two control pens (C, rooting areas filled with compost only). The experiment started in October 2019 and lasted 34 weeks with seven replicates in total. Group size ranged between 21–35 pigs (N = 386). We registered behaviour once a week through direct observations of the complete outdoor area and additional video recordings of the rooting area. Behavioural variables of interest were activity status (i.e. standing/sitting or lying), rooting, agonistic and play behaviour. We assessed cleanliness of the rooting material via visual scoring and chemical analysis of compost samples. The latter included tests on dry matter content, conductivity, and ammonium concentration. Data were analysed with linear mixed-effects models. Results showed that there was a tendency for a higher total number of pigs in the rooting area in E than in C (p = 0.06). In E, more pigs were lying in the rooting area than in C (p = 0.04). There was no difference between treatments in rooting behaviour. In addition, the overall use of the outdoor run did not differ between treatments. Time of day influenced all recorded behaviours in the rooting area (p < 0.001). With increasing temperature, more pigs were present in the outdoor run (p < 0.001) and in the rooting area (p < 0.01) for both treatments. Conductivity and ammonium concentration in the compost increased the longer the compost remained in the rooting area (p < 0.001), but there was no difference between the two treatments. We conclude that mixing corn pellets into rooting material increases the use of the rooting area by heightening the overall presence of pigs in it but not its cleanliness.
Highlights
Exploration is an intrinsic behavioural need in pigs involving root ing, sniffing, chewing and manipulation of numerous items
While it has been shown that rooting areas make the outdoor run more attractive to pigs and contribute to overall cleanliness of the out door area (Vermeer et al, 2015; Olsson et al, 2016a), knowledge is lacking on the design of such areas to ensure “good functioning” i.e., being used by the pigs for exploratory but not for elimination behaviour
Location in the rooting area had a significant effect regarding conductivity and ammonium concentration, indicating that the corners which were closer to the indoor area, were preferred for elimination behaviour
Summary
Exploration is an intrinsic behavioural need in pigs involving root ing, sniffing, chewing and manipulation of numerous items (reviewed by Studnitz et al, 2007). While it has been shown that rooting areas make the outdoor run more attractive to pigs and contribute to overall cleanliness of the out door area (Vermeer et al, 2015; Olsson et al, 2016a), knowledge is lacking on the design of such areas to ensure “good functioning” i.e., being used by the pigs for exploratory but not for elimination behaviour. This is important since a soiled area is positively correlated to higher ammonia emissions (Aarnink et al, 1996) and could result in health problems (e.g. endoparasite accumulation). The main objective was to study the effects of mixing corn pellets into rooting material on the use and cleanliness of the rooting area in organic growing-finishing pigs under commercial organic conditions
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