Freedom of choice: using natural foraging behaviour to promote health and welfare in commercial pig production

Pigs forage to meet their nutrient requirements but also because exploring and searching for food is rewarding in itself. However, intensively farmed pigs have little opportunity to engage in natural foraging behaviours.

If pigs’ behavioural needs are not met from early life onwards, resilience (the ability to cope with and recover from challenges) is reduced, while disease susceptibility and anxiety are increased, leading to loss of production, reduced profits and poor welfare.

In this project, we aim to give piglets the freedom of choosing different foraging activities (i.e., different food types and ways to forage) in order to simulate some of the experiences that they would get in nature.

We will test if providing piglets with freedom to choose different foraging activities early in life will increase early-feed intake, and reduce post-weaning diarrhoea and tail biting.

In addition, we expect that freedom of choice early in life will increase cognitive abilities, brain plasticity, mood and resilience even later in life.

The project will generate new knowledge central for improving feeding and management strategies to promote natural foraging behaviours and meet public expectations of giving pigs ‘a life worth living’.

By introducing freedom of choice of foraging, we will provide farmers with more flexibility and autonomy in selecting different food types and a way of presenting these, which will increase their production efficiency and market competitiveness.