Pigs are among the most cognitively sophisticated farmed animals, yet conventional farming systems provide environments profoundly mismatched to their behavioural needs. Enrichment science offers practical solutions.
Pig enrichment is not a luxury — it is a welfare necessity for a species that evolved to spend eight or more hours per day foraging, rooting and exploring. The absence of appropriate enrichment in intensive systems causes chronic frustration that manifests as stereotypic behaviour, tail biting, and reduced immune function. Providing substrate-based enrichment consistently reduces tail biting and medication use — it is both a welfare imperative and economically sensible. Higher-welfare pig systems are those designed around pig behaviour, not merely around what pigs can physically survive.