Outdoor pig farming offers significant welfare advantages over confinement systems but introduces unique challenges around heat stress, predation, and environmental management.
Outdoor pig production represents a substantially better welfare environment than indoor confinement for most behavioral needs, but it is not without welfare challenges that require active management. The welfare benefits are clear: rooting, wallowing, social complexity, and exercise opportunities that are impossible indoors are fully expressed in well-managed outdoor systems. The welfare challenges include heat stress without adequate wallowing facilities, exposure welfare risks in severe weather, and the potential for pasture degradation that creates muddy, unhealthy conditions if rotation is inadequate. Well-managed outdoor systems with appropriate shelter, wallows, rotation, and predator management represent the gold standard for pig welfare within commercial production.