Outdoor pig systems offer significant welfare benefits but also expose animals to environmental challenges requiring good management to mitigate.
Outdoor pig systems provide genuine welfare benefits — rooting, wallowing, social foraging, and space for natural behaviour expression — that intensive indoor systems cannot replicate. However, outdoor systems have their own welfare challenges. Without adequate shade and wallows, pigs in summer experience severe heat stress and sunburn. Wet autumn conditions can lead to lameness and respiratory disease if management is inadequate. Predation by foxes threatens piglets. Good outdoor management provides wallows, arcs for shelter, rotational pasture to prevent parasite buildup, and shade. The welfare balance clearly favours outdoor systems when managed appropriately over intensive indoor production.