Group housing of gestating sows provides significant welfare benefits over individual stalls but requires careful management of aggression and feeding competition.
Gestating sows in group housing express natural movement, social grooming, and foraging behaviours that are impossible in individual stalls. The welfare benefit is substantial. However, poorly managed group housing creates its own welfare problems: fighting at feeding, resource competition, and subordinate sow exclusion. Dynamic grouping with frequent mixing causes repeated aggressive encounters. Static group management from service to farrowing provides stable social relationships and is welfare-superior to frequent regrouping. Welfare-focused gestation housing combines group housing with stable group composition and individualised feeding.