Tail biting among pigs can pose a problem, so most producers dock tails in the first few days of the animal’s life.
“Yet even with docked tails, you can get tail biting,” said David Fraser, a professor of animal welfare at the University of British Columbia.
“Pigs are chewy animals. They’re like puppies; they chew on things by nature. So as long as they aren’t doing it too intensely or for too long, then it’s pretty harmless.”
Fraser said tail biting can be serious if there is repeated mild trauma or intense chomping.
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From an animal welfare point of view, the worst thing for pigs is an outbreak of tail biting, he said.
“So if we can do some minor surgical procedure that isn’t bad for the animals and really reduces the incidences of tail biting, then it’s good.”
Bill Vaags, a hog producer from Dugald, Man., east of Winnipeg, said he has been docking for 15 years. The practice takes about the last third of the tail, where there is low pain sensitivity.
Vaags said docking is necessary because, “when you get tail biting, the problem is that probably 90 percent of the time, the animal that’s been tail bitten is going to be condemned when it goes to market.”
A condemned carcass is just one of the consequences. Fraser said a pig that has been bitten doesn’t grow as well and could die if an infection travels up the spinal column.
Docking has helped the tail-biting problem for Vaags, but he still has to watch that his pigs aren’t chewing on the remaining part of the tail.
“You can still get tail biting even though you’ve docked their tails, if you continuously overcrowd. When they get overcrowded, they get frustrated and they take their frustrations out on one of their roommates.”
Other factors also contribute to tail biting, said Fraser.
“It’s a genetic predisposition, management factors that make a pig more or less restless, lack of objects in the environment that cause them to direct the chewing to other pigs and dietary factors that make the blood more or less attractive after the tails have been injured.”
Fraser has researched dietary factors.
More than 10 years ago, he conducted a study for Agriculture Canada that connected diet with tail biting.
He said pigs with a well-balanced diet still chewed on a blood-soaked cord supplied by researchers, but at a rate 50 percent lower than pigs on a diet low in salt and protein.
“Pigs with a well-balanced diet still had a mild attraction to blood but you move into a different league if the pig is on a low protein or low salt diet,” said Fraser.
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He suggests that producers monitor the salt level of their animal feed, avoid overcrowding in barns, control temperature and give the pigs other things to chew on like straw.
But producer Vaags said no matter what he has tried, docking is the most effective measure.
“There’s definitely some benefits to increased salt but basically we’ve used the practice of tail docking for about 15 years and it is probably the most effective.”
Another hog producer, Walter Yates agreed.
“You can only use so much salt and then that too causes a problem,” said Yates, who farms near Gull Lake, Sask. “Too much salt can give the pigs diarrhea.”
Yates said he has hung chains from the ceiling for pigs to play with and put objects in pens for them to bat around, but nothing stops tail biting better than docking.
On a tour to Europe with the Canada Pork Council, he discovered Britain doesn’t allow tail docking for humane reasons.
However, he also learned tail biting is less of a problem there because most pigs are raised outdoors. This alleviates overcrowding.
Europe’s pig production is comparable to Canada, said professor Fraser, and many producers do raise pigs indoors. Tail docking is also forbidden in Norway.
The thinking is “let’s get the environment so right that we don’t need to tail dock to prevent tail biting. There’s an ideal world out there where pigs are under such good conditions, tail docking is unnecessary,” said Fraser.
For now, research studies and European practices won’t change Yates’ and Vaags’ minds.
“We’d rather do it this way (dock), and there’s no suffering to the animal if you do it at such an early age,” said Vaags.
