Outdoor pig production offers significant welfare benefits including rooting behaviour, space, and natural environment, but requires management to avoid welfare problems specific to outdoor systems.
Outdoor pig production welfare is generally superior to indoor intensive alternatives for the behaviours that outdoor systems facilitate — rooting, wallowing, space, and natural social interaction. However, outdoor systems create their own welfare challenges: heat stress in summer (pigs are highly susceptible), hypothermia in newborn piglets in cold weather, and predation from foxes. Well-managed outdoor systems address these challenges through provision of shade and wallows in summer, farrowing arcs with deep bedding in winter, and appropriate predator management. The welfare benefits of outdoor production are substantial when these management challenges are well-addressed, making it the gold standard for pig welfare that cannot be achieved indoors.