Tail biting in pigs

Keelin O'Driscoll (Ph.D., 2007) is a Senior Research Officer in Teagasc, the Irish Agricultural Development Authority. Her research focuses on improving commercial pig welfare, and she has investigated strategies to reduce the need to tail dock for 10 years. Anna Valros (Ph.D., 2003) is Professor of Animal Welfare at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Helsinki. Pig welfare is her main research area, and she has worked on tail biting related topics for over 20 years.

Lists of figures and tables



Introduction



1 The legal prohibition on routine tail docking and the long road to achieving compliance

Compassion in World Farming: tail docking of pigs – where are we, and how did we get here

 Peter Stephenson



2 Anatomy and physiology of the pig tail: characterisation of tail biting injury and consequences

 Dale Sandercock, Mette Herskin and Heli Nordgren



3 Why does tail biting occur? An evolutionary perspective

 Rick D’Eath and Marc Bracke



4 Individual pig-related factors

 Laurianne Canario and Catherine Larzul



5 Poor health and the brain: how the immune system can influence neurophysiology and behaviour, and how this relates to damaging behaviour in pigs

 Hege Lund and Janicke Nordgreen



6 The social environment

 Inonge Reimert and Nanda Ursinus



7 The physical environment

 Keelin O’Driscoll, Melissa Cupido and Jen-Yun Chou



8 Environmental enrichment

 Stephanie Buijs, Jen-Yun Chou and Heleen van de Weerd



9 Feeds and feeding

 Sandra Edwards



10 Risk assessment

 Sabine Dippel



11 The evidence of tail biting: where, when and how to measure tail lesions

 Anna Valros and Laura Boyle



12 Changing stakeholder behaviour

 Grace Carroll, Alison Burrell, and Lisa Graham-Wisener



13 Precision livestock farming

 Mona Lilian Vestbjerg Larsen, Lene Juul Pedersen and Tomas Norton



14 The tail as an iceberg indicator: interrelationships with welfare problems

 Manja Zupan Šemrov and Antonia Patt



15 The economic and legal aspects of tail biting and tail docking

 Jarkko K. Niemi and Peter Stevenson



16 The ethical aspects of tail biting and tail docking

 Berenice Bovenkerk, Marc Bracke and Anna Valros



Conclusion