On-farm tail biting prevention in long-tailed pigs – results from a producer questionnaire in Finland

Tail biting is a serious welfare problem in pigs, causing substantial economic losses. In the majority of the EU countries, tail docking is used to reduce the incidence of tail biting. However, many of the risk factors for tail biting are related to suboptimal management, and tail biting can be reduced by corrective management decisions. There are few studies on which preventive measures producers themselves value as most important.

A questionnaire was distributed via slaughterhouse webpages in 2015. Producers were asked to score the importance of handling different tail-biting risk factors on their own farms, as well as about which manipulable materials they use, and find efficient. In addition, we asked about their opinions on tail biting and tail docking. A total of 70 producers replied, 54 of these replies were regarding fattening pigs, and 16 regarding weaned pigs. The size of the pig units varied between 100 and 6400 pigs, with an average of 1307 pigs. Finland banned tail docking in 2003, so all farms raised long-tailed pigs only.

On average, the producers reported a prevalence of tail biting of 2,3% on their farms, which corresponds well with values reported at Finnish abattoirs. Most producers found tail biting not to be a big problem on their farms and 62% of the farmers found it very unlikely that they would raise tail docked pigs even if it was legal in Finland. The more tail biting reported on the farm, the more problematic the farmers found tail biting, and the more prone they were to say they would probably tail dock if they were allowed to.

According to the Finnish producers, the most important factor to prevent tail biting is that there is enough feeding space for the pigs. Altogether, four feeding-related risk factors were included in the top-10 measures to prevent tail biting. Also pig health was considered very important, as well as a good quality of piglets, and controlling air movements in the pen. Straw, newspaper, hay and cardboard were considered the most efficient manipulable materials to prevent tail biting. If tail biting has already started in the pen, the producers ranked identifying and removing the tail biter from the pen as most important, followed by adding bedding-type manipulable materials.

The results are partly in accordance with experimental and epidemiological studies on risk factors for tail biting, but the high focus on feedingrelated and health factors is interesting. Finnish farmers appear to handle the tail docking ban well, and do not, on average, find tail biting a very serious problem.

Disclosure of Interest: None Declared.