GSS EU Science Funding Gateway

The automated measuring system will serve as a systematic, comprehensive and tailored feedback system to assist farmers to:

• Make trials to shift from routine tail docking to raising intact pigs.
• Monitor episodes of tail biting in the holdings/batches of tail docked or intact pigs, in order to take appropriate corrective measures. Farmers encountering a high incidence of tail lesions could seek further assistance.
•  Identify early signs of tail biting episodes in the holdings/batches of tail docked or intact pigs, in order to take preventive measures.

Farmers do not practice tail docking routinely and provides for the steps to take in order to eliminate any need for tail docking. To make the transition from tail docking to raising intact pigs, farmers have to:

• Assess the risk of tail biting in their holding.
• Take any necessary measures to mitigate the identified risks in terms of applying changes in the environmental conditions and management practices.
• Make trials to raise batches of intact pigs under the altered husbandry conditions.
• Monitor the situation by recording tail lesions in the intact batches, with the aim to assess the effectiveness of the measures taken in mitigating the tail biting risks.

Monitoring of tail lesions should also take place in holdings/batches of tail docked pigs, as tail biting episodes can occur even in groups of tail docked animals. In this case, it is particularly important to identify early signs of tail lesions, as the first stages of the process of tail biting is unlikely to be picked up by the passing observation of the stock people. Finally, monitoring of tail lesions is very important in farms that raise intact pigs, given that tail biting has multifactorial causes and episodes may occur even if husbandry conditions are optimised.