Providing pigs with foraging opportunities addresses one of their strongest behavioural motivations and substantially reduces aggression, stereotypies, and tail-biting in intensive systems.
Foraging enrichment addresses a fundamental welfare deficit in intensive pig production. When pigs cannot forage, they redirect oral-nasal manipulation to pen-mates, fixtures, and the ground — behaviours that are stereotypic at best and harmful at worst. Tail-biting begins as exploratory behaviour and escalates to serious injury and even death of affected animals. The welfare evidence is unambiguous: providing sufficient quantities of suitable material — particularly straw, compost, or other substrates that can be rooted through and consumed — dramatically reduces the frequency of harmful redirected behaviours. The key variables are quantity, novelty, and accessibility. A small chain or hanging toy provides minutes of interest before habituation; a fresh bale of straw provides hours of engagement and can be renewed daily. The challenge in slatted systems is drainage management — straw blocks slats and increases labour. Deep-litter and bedded systems eliminate the conflict entirely. Intermittent provision of novel materials maintains interest even in systems where daily renewal is impractical.