Background & Aims

Background

Outdoor housing systems provide pigs greater opportunity to express their natural behaviours, such as rooting and foraging, compared to commercial settings. These systems are also tied to reducing abnormal or aggressive behaviours.

Pigs are social animals, forming group structures similar to their wild counterparts, wild boars and feral pigs. In natural environments, a typical social group includes a sow and her offspring, while adult males are mostly solitary. These sow groups can span multiple generations and consist of closely related females.

In the wild, pigs spend much of their time foraging, rooting, and exploring, behaviours that remain strong even in domestic pigs when conditions allow. They also establish a home range used for feeding, resting, and eliminating, ranging from a few hectares to several square kilometres. Importantly, pigs show a natural preference to eliminate away from resting and feeding sites, suggesting that pigs have a behavioural need for different zones and areas, that may as well influence elimination patterns in commercial settings.

Aims

In my study, I investigated the elimination-related behaviours expressed and the preferred spots used by sows and piglets in a natural environment on an open-air farm. More specifically, I assessed what behaviours the animals express when given the ability to roam freely in an area with natural conditions, and if the location of elimination differs from preferred elimination spots chosen by pigs at conventional farms. As well, observing piglets was to assess if the animals shared similar elimination behaviours with their mother from a young age on, including location preferences, or if their behaviour differed from that of adult pigs.