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The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of a higher content of soluble dietary fibre in the diet of growing pigs on tail biting. Pig groups were of equally distributed mixed gender and males were castrated during the first days of life. Two treatment groups were investigated over nine batches with on average 194.4 (SD 14.0) pigs per batch. One treatment group (n = 810) received a conventional diet (control) from 29 to 51 days of age. The other treatment group (n = 821) was fed with a commercially available dietary diet (fibre) wherein levels of soluble dietary fibre had been increased by 0.5 (Piglet-Growing-Food-I) respectively 1.6 (Piglet-Growing-Food-II) percentage points. Tail lesions and tail losses were scored once a week and weight was recorded at pen level during weaning, three weeks later and before the start of the fattening period. Tail biting was influenced by week after weaning (p

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects on tail-biting during rearing of housing piglets of the same litter compared to piglets from different litters. The treatments “litter-wise” (LW, n =240) and “mixed litters” (ML, n =238) were housed in five identical units. Each tail was scored regarding tail lesions and tail losses once per week with a four-point score (0= no damage/original length to 3= severe damage/total loss). The effect of week after weaning had highly significant influences on tail lesions (p

The aim of this study was to reveal the effects of raw material provision on tail-biting outbreaks in long-tailed pigs. Two different substrates, dried corn silage (SG, n=245) and alfalfa hay (AG, n=245) were provided for the pigs twice per day from the second week of life until the end of rearing. The control of long-tailed pigs (CG, n=231) were kept without the provision of additional raw material. Each tail was scored regarding tail lesions/tail losses once per week with a four-point score (0=no damage/original length, 3=severe damage/total loss). Weight was collected at the beginning and at the end of rearing. The effect of week after weaning, the batch and the interaction between treatment group and batch had highly significant influences on tail lesions (p

This study was conducted within the MulTiViS-project consortium on multivariate animal welfare assessment. The aim of this investigation was to perform a status quo analysis of the noise level in fattening pig farms (n = 214) and to evaluate the suitability of noise as an animal welfare indicator. In 755 conventional fattening compartments, noise measurements were carried out for one minute at animal height using the Acoustic Analyser XL2, including microphone M2210 (NTI Audio, Schaan, Liechtenstein). In addition, various animal health and environmental factors of 33,668 pigs were recorded in randomly selected pens (n = 1,668) of these compartments. The mean equivalent noise level was 70.2 ± 5.2 dB (min 52.5, max 92.4 dB). Noise levels in compartments housing older pigs were higher (72.0 ± 5.2 dB) than those in compartments housing younger pigs (68.5 ± 4.7 dB, ***P