A survey of tail docking at pig farm in Korea

In swine industry, piglets are tail docked at 3~7days old to prevent tail biting which is not fully understood what reason is. However, in the point of animal welfare, the cutting action is on negative perspective. Because the tail is a key role in communicating each pig and expressing their conditions, and docking practice causes amputation neuroma which is accompanied with pain. The aim of this survey was to examine the length and the diameter of docked tails for indicator to animal welfare at pig farm in Korea.

At slaughterhouse, a total 600 tails were surveyed about length and diameter according to methods by M.S. Herskin et al., 2014. In their research, the intact tail length of crossbred LYD (Landrace x Yorkshire x Duroc) was 30.6 ±0.6 cm (n=65). The length of docked tail was a distance betwefen 1cm from the root and 0.5cm from the tip, and the diameter was at the 0.5cm from the tip. The experimental design was divided into 3 groups: group L (long, 15.3 cm ≤ length < 22.95 cm, 25~50% docking), group M (moderate, 7.65 ≤ length < 15.3, 50~75% docking) and group S (short, length < 7.65, 75~100% docking). Tail lengths and diameters were measured by a ruler, and docking percentages were estimated through the referred intact tail length, mentioned above. Kruskal-Wallis test of SPSS statistics 21 (IBM Corp., USA) were used for relationship between lengths and diameters in each group.

Total tail mean length was 11.31±4.00 cm, mean diameter was 1.30 ± 0.16 cm and docking percent was 63.01 ± 12.06%, respectively. The results of tail lengths, diameters and docking percentage in each group as follow: group L (n=120, 20%) was 17.80 ± 1.40; 1.11 ± 0.11 and 41.78 ± 4.57%, group M (n=367, 61.17%) was 10.69 ± 1.91; 1.31 ± 0 and 65.03 ± 6.25%. and group S (n= 113, 18.83%) was 6.43 ± 0.92; 1.46± 0.07 and 78.88 ± 3.03, respectively. In relationship between lengths and diameters of each group, the diameter of L group was respectively smaller than the other groups (P < 0.001).

These results show that the docking practice in Korean pig farm tended to remove 50~75% of the tails. The observed differences in tail length and diameter at the time of slaughter may be useful as welfare surveillance tools in order to identify the docking practice in pig farms.

Disclosure of Interest: None Declared.