Factors identifying pigs predisposed to tail biting

Animals, 2019

Simple Summary: Tail lesions are a major welfare concern within pig farming. Tail lesions result from biting and chewing of the tail of one pig by another and can indicate boredom and frustration within the herd. While extensive research has been carried out to understand and eliminate tail biting in pigs, findings from scientific studies have often not been applied in practice. This may be due, in part, to a failure to consider the role of farmer behaviour in improving animal welfare. If farmer behaviour does not change, it is unlikely that tail lesion prevalence will change from current levels. In this paper, the shortcomings of traditional behaviour change theories were discussed and a guide for designing human behaviour change interventions for pig farmers was provided. It is essential that collaborations between social scientists and animal welfare scientists occur if research findings are to be put into practice on farms.

Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 2011

This study investigated the association between tail biting (TB) and other abnormal behaviours in a group of non-tail docked pigs. Behavioural data were collected from 742 pigs housed on a commercial farm. The prevalence of performed and received TB, belly nosing, bar biting, ear biting and mounting was recorded during two 30 min observation periods. Pigs were categorized based on the number of performed tail bites/hour; nonperformers (NP, TB = 0, n = 643), low performers (LP, TB = 1-4, n = 79), high performers (HP, TB > 4, n = 20) and the number of received tail bites; non-receivers (NR, TB = 0, n = 559), low receivers (LR, TB = 1-2, n = 133) and high receivers (HR, TB > 2, n = 50). Based on the intensity of the receivers' response to being bitten, TB behaviour was further classified into three grades; no, mild or severe reaction. Tail-in-mouth behaviour, which did not involve biting, was also recorded.

Animals, 2021

Tail-biting is globally recognized as a welfare concern for commercial swine production. Substantial research has been undertaken to identify risk factors and intervention methods to decrease and understand this vice. Tail-biting appears to be multifactorial and has proven difficult to predict and control. The primary objective of the scoping review was to identify and chart all available literature on the risk factors and interventions associated with tail-biting in pigs. A secondary objective was to identify gaps in the literature and identify the relevance for a systematic review. An online literature search of four databases, encompassing English, peer-reviewed and grey literature published from 1 January 1970 to 31 May 2019, was conducted. Relevance screening and charting of included articles were performed by two independent reviewers. A total of 465 citations were returned from the search strategy. Full-text screening was conducted on 118 articles, with 18 being excluded in t...

Research in Veterinary Science, 2013

This study evaluated whether the specific heavy pig rearing context allowed the fattening of undocked pigs without an outbreak of tail biting. At the same time, gender and straw availability (small amounts) were considered to understand their possible interactions with tail presence in the display of tail biting. A 2 Â 2 Â 2 factorial design was adopted to test the effects of these factors on blood parameters, behaviour and tail/ear lesions. Few interactions among factors were detected. Undocked pigs showed lower cortisol (P < 0.02), lying behaviour (P < 0.001), and higher risk of tail/ear biting (weeks 3 and 9), but lower risk of tail lesions (week 14). Straw increased the motivation for exploring (P < 0.001), reduced serum haptoglobin (P < 0.001) and the risk for tail biting (weeks 3, 9, 18) and ear biting (weeks 3, 9). Results highlight the importance of straw as an environmental enrichment and seem to indicate that fattening undocked heavy pigs is possible.

Veterinary journal (London, England : 1997), 2016

Tail biting lesions have a negative effect on both the welfare of pigs and on the revenue of the pig farm. Due to the multifactorial nature of this abnormal behaviour and its sporadic onset, an epidemiological approach was adopted to identify the management and housing factors influencing the occurrence of tail biting and the frequency of bitten pigs in the weaning and fattening phases up to 170 kg live weight in heavy pig production. Data were collected from a sample of 67 commercial pig farms via an on-farm visit and a questionnaire to the farmer. Data collected included general farm information, hygiene and herd health, prevention, management, climate control, feeding and production traits. In the weaning phase, the occurrence of tail biting was increased by a factor of 16.64 for tipped vs. short-docked tails, by a factor of 68.09 when the observer detected poor air quality, and by a factor of 14.44 when the feeding time was variable. In fattening pigs, a high stocking density in...

Animals

Tail posture (i.e., hanging or curled) has been suggested to be an indicator of tail biting, and hanging tails predisposed to damage. The aim of this study was to investigate if tail posture was feasible as a tail damage indicator in a commercial setting. The study was carried out on one batch of 459 undocked finishing pigs (30–120 kg in weight). Weekly scoring of tail posture was combined with the scoring of tail lesions. Tail posture was observed at feeding to facilitate the usage of the method in commercial settings. A curly tail was observed in 94% of the observations. Pigs with tails scored with “wound” were 4.15 (p &lt; 0.0001) times more likely to have hanging tails, and pigs scored with “inflamed wounds” were 14.24 (p &lt; 0.0001) times more likely to have hanging tails, compared to pigs with nondamaged tails. Tail posture correctly classified tails with “wound” or “inflamed wound” 67.5% of the time, with 55.2% sensitivity and 79.7% specificity, respectively. The method of o...

2020

The pig industry faces many animal welfare issues. Among these, biting behaviour has a high incidence. It is indicative of an existing problem in biters and is a source of physical damage and psychological stress for the victims. We categorize this behaviour into aggressive and non-aggressive biting, the latter often being directed towards the tail. This review focusses specifically on predisposing factors in early life, comprising the prenatal and postnatal periods up to weaning, for the expression of aggressive and non-aggressive biting later in life. The influence of personality and coping style has been examined in a few studies. It varies according to these studies and, thus, further evaluation is needed. Regarding the effect of environmental factors, the number of scientific papers is low (less than five papers for most factors). No clear influence of prenatal factors has been identified to date. Aggressive biting is reduced by undernutrition, cross-fostering and socialization before weaning. Nonaggressive biting is increased by undernutrition, social stress due to competition and cross-fostering. These latter three factors are highly dependent on litter size at birth. The use of familiar odours may contribute to reducing biting when pigs are moved from one environment to another by alleviating the level of stress associated with novelty. Even though the current environment in which pigs are expressing biting behaviours is of major importance, the pre-weaning environment should be optimized to reduce the likelihood of this problem.

Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 2009

Predicting that an outbreak of tail biting is going to occur in a group of pigs would be a useful tool for farmers. In a prospective longitudinal study, 24 groups of c.30 undocked pigs were followed from birth to slaughter weight. Four groups had to be excluded from the analysis, the remaining groups were classified as having No Outbreak (n=6), Underlying Outbreak (n=8) or Severe Outbreak (n=6) of tail biting. The hypotheses examined were that pigs would be more active, perform more tail-orientated behaviours, or have their tails tucked under their body more in groups that went on to have outbreaks than in those that did not. Direct observations were made at 7, 11, 15 and 19 weeks of age and video recordings were examined for the 4 days prior to an outbreak. All outbreaks occurred after the behavioural observation at 2 11 weeks of age. Activity levels were significantly higher in Severe Outbreak groups in the four days prior to an outbreak, with more pigs Standing (p<0.05) and significantly fewer pigs Sitting (p<0.05) or Lying Inactive (p<0.05) than in matched control groups. Comparisons of the Severe, Underlying and No Outbreak groups at 7 and 11 weeks of age, prior to any outbreaks, showed no difference in activity levels. However, at these ages, levels of Tail Interest were higher in No Outbreak groups than in those with Severe Outbreaks (p<0.05), while the opposite was true for damaging Tail Biting (p<0.05). Thus high levels of damaging Tail Biting may be a good predictor of impending outbreaks, but high levels of Tail Interest are not. Tail position also differed between groups at this age, with fewer Tails Tucked Under in No Outbreak groups (p<0.01). Some outbreaks were predicted by multiple variables, while others had no clear predictors. In five outbreaks a small runty pig was tail bitten in the absence of a full outbreak. Whenever this happened, a full tail biting outbreak always went on to take place sometime afterwards. The occurrence of single tail biting events may thus be reliable indicators of future outbreaks. In summary, measurement of pig activity has potential for predicting tail biting outbreaks on commercial farms as do levels of tails tucked under and damaging tail contact. Further work is needed to understand the relationship between different forms of tail contact and tail biting. We highlight the difficulty in predicting all outbreaks from a single measure and conclude that tail biting outbreaks vary considerably. The presence of an 'indicator pig' might be a useful sign that an outbreak will occur.

Journal of Animal Science, 2013

The long term aim with this study was to identify predictors or early indicators of tail biting outbreaks using registrations from electronic feeders. This study is based on information about daily frequency of feeder visits (DFV) and daily feed consumption (DFC) recorded in electronic feeders from 460 noncastrated boars in tail biting pens (TB pens, n = 21) and matched control pens (Con pens, n = 21) from 10 wk before to 10 wk after the first injured tail in the pen. The results showed lower average DFV among pigs in TB pens compared with pigs in Con pens 6 to 9 wk before the start of the tail biting outbreak (first treatment for tail damage due to tail biting; P ≤ 0.1, df = 487) but a greater DFV for tail biting victims 2 to 5 wk before the start of the tail biting outbreak compared both to other pigs in the TB pen and to pigs in the Con pen (P < 0.1, df = 6,500). Tail biting victims had decreased DFC during and after the tail biting outbreak [wk 0 to 2 after the tail biting outbreak (P < 0.1, df = 6,500)]. In conclusion, information from electronic feeders can be used for surveillance of tail biting outbreaks in pigs. Due to common casual factors, low feeding frequencies observed on the group level can predict future tail biting in the pen as early as 9 wk before the first tail injuries. Moreover, increased feeding frequencies for individual pigs in potential tail biting pens may predict which pigs will be become the victims in the tail biting outbreak. The results further support previous findings that pigs with tail injuries due to tail biting consume decreased amounts of feed.