Pigs rapidly habituate to enrichment materials, reducing their welfare benefit over time. Enrichment rotation strategies that maintain novelty are essential to sustaining welfare benefits across the production cycle.
Enrichment provision that is static and unchanging fails to deliver the welfare benefits that genuinely engaging stimulation provides. Pigs in commercial systems are curious, intelligent animals that quickly exhaust the exploratory potential of fixed enrichment items. Welfare-positive enrichment must provide ongoing novelty and the opportunity for manipulation, investigation, and social interaction with materials. Straw and other degradable materials that change with use provide superior enrichment because they cannot be fully explored. Rotation programmes that regularly introduce new materials or change existing ones maintain the motivational relevance of enrichment throughout a production cycle.