The Benefits of Enrichment Toys?
Why?
Pigs are naturally curious and social animals who are highly motivated to explore their environment as they would do in their natural woodland habitat. In the wild, pigs spend their time rooting, biting, chewing, burrowing, foraging and exploring.
The benefits to providing environmental enrichment to pigs include; reducing the frequency of vices (tail biting, aggression etc), increase the pigs ability to deal with challenges in a more natural way, broaden the range of behaviours expressed, improve production performance (feed intake, average daily gain, feed conversion ratio) and reduce stress.
Aggression occurs in pigs for many reasons. Pigs fight with each other to establish a dominance hierarchy, to fight for food and to fight to ensure they are left alone. Environmental enrichment at a young age also reduces aggression in piglets after weaning (McKenny, et al., 2007).
For example, the EasyFix® Luna 50 allows piglets to explore by rooting, sniffing, biting and chewing. It remains at floor level in order to encourage the natural exploratory behaviour of piglets in the wild. The Easyfix® Luna 50 is accessible as numerous piglets can interact with the device at any one time. It’s unique design ensures it doesn’t get stuck in corners and it remains clean and hygienic. Compared to other forms of environmental enrichment, the Easyfix® Luna 50 is also easily sourced, cost effective, easy to install and also safe for the farmer to handle.