Impact of amount of straw on pig and pen hygiene in partly slatted flooring systems
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Impact of amount of straw on pig and pen hygiene in partly slatted flooring systems Torun Wallgren1* , Nils Lundeheim2 and Stefan Gunnarsson3
Abstract Background: Straw is a beneficial enrichment material for pigs, shown to improve welfare through reducing tail biting. Straw has previously been identified as one of the means of how to raise pigs without tail docking, through improving natural exploratory behaviour. Straw has however been linked to poor pen hygiene, making farmers reluctant to use straw and has largely not been implemented in commercial farming worldwide. Straw is a beneficial enrichment material for pigs, shown to improve welfare and reduce abnormal behaviour such as tail biting. Results: This study investigates the impact of straw on pig and pen hygiene in pens with partly slatted floor in three grower and four finishing pig batches on five commercial farms (2329 pigs, 211 pens) in Sweden which were providing straw daily. Each batch was divided into two treatments; Control: 50-600 g straw/pen/day based on the farm normal straw ration; and Extra straw; (=doubled Control ration). The pens were scored based on cleanliness of the pigs, solid and slatted pen floor every second week. The pig and pen hygiene were mostly scored as clean in both treatments, overall around 1% of the observations were considered dirty/soiled. Conclusions: As very few pens or pigs were considered dirty, it was concluded that straw provision is possible without risking poor pig and pen hygiene. Few observations in this study were considered dirty regardless of amount of straw that was provided, and had likely to do with other factors in the production rather than straw ration. These results implies that straw could be used in partly slatted pens in order to improve pig environment but more research is needed to quantify the impact of other external factors related to climate (e.g. temperature, humidity, velocity). Keywords: Grower, Finisher, Fattening pig, Enrichment
Background Over 90% of EU pigs are tail docked to minimise tail biting which causes reduced welfare and production [1]. Although tail biting is a multifactorial issue, lack of long straw was identified as the largest risk factor for tail biting through an EFSA report on the subject [2]. Several studies have investigated the effect of straw amount on the level of tail biting on both research farms [3, 4] and in commercial settings [5, 6]. Actual implementation of straw has * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Department of Animal Environment and Health, P.O. Box 7068, S-75007 Uppsala, Sweden Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
however largely not taken place and there are still lack of management routines on how to provide straw. One reason why straw provision has not been implemented is the farmer opinion that straw may block the slatted flooring, manure handling system and stack mired straw in pens, disturbing the pen environment [7–9]. In
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