The nursery phase of pig production — from weaning at 3-4 weeks to 25kg — is among the most welfare-challenging periods in commercial pork production. Understanding nursery welfare reveals how early life conditions shape pig welfare outcomes.
Nursery pig welfare begins with the fundamental stress of early weaning: piglets removed at 3-4 weeks are neurologically and immunologically immature, lose their primary social bond, and must rapidly adapt to solid food at an age when natural suckling would continue for months. The stress cascade — disrupted gut microbiome, immune suppression, social disruption — produces the welfare and health problems characteristic of nursery settings. Enrichment, while counterintuitively effective even in constrained nursery pens, reduces the frustration-driven behavior that leads to tail-biting and other welfare problems. The root welfare intervention is weaning age extension, which several European certification schemes require, significantly improving piglet welfare at the cost of reduced sow productivity.