Outdoor pig production faces specific welfare challenges in summer, with heat stress, biting insects, and inadequate wallowing facilities creating welfare problems in poorly managed systems.
Summer outdoor pig welfare requires proactive management to prevent heat stress in a species with limited thermoregulatory capacity. Wallowing is not a behavioral luxury but a biological necessity - pigs that cannot wallow in hot weather experience genuine thermal stress with physiological consequences including reduced feed intake, elevated cortisol, and impaired reproductive performance. Well-managed outdoor systems provide multiple shallow wallows per group, adequate shade with proper airflow, supplementary water during hot periods, and modify management to avoid moving or handling pigs during peak heat. Poorly managed outdoor systems may have worse summer welfare than well-designed indoor systems with cooling infrastructure.