Group housing for pigs allows expression of natural social behaviour but requires careful management to prevent aggression and injury. Getting it right delivers major welfare benefits.
Group housing for pigs represents the direction of welfare travel in pig farming, but its benefits are realised only when management is carefully designed to support stable social groupings and reduce mixing stress. The welfare gains of group housing — social expression, play, synchronised resting, and freedom from the isolation of individual stalls — are real and substantial. But poorly managed group systems with frequent regrouping, inadequate space, no enrichment, and high stocking density can produce worse welfare outcomes than individual housing where baseline conditions are otherwise good. The welfare case for group housing is strongest when combined with stable group composition, adequate space, enrichment provision, and careful management of the mixing events that are unavoidable in some production systems.