Smell this! - Improving enrichment materials for pigs using odours

Pigs are highly motivated for exploring.

When commercially kept pigs are unable to satisfy their need for performing this behaviour, it can be detrimental for both animal welfare and farm economy.

Despite the pig’s highly developed sense of smell, the potential to use odours as enrichment tools in modern pig production has only received very little attention.

This project aims to investigate the potential of using odours to optimize current enrichment strategies and thereby improve animal welfare alongside farm economy. Through a series of tests, we will identify odours, which pigs are interested in exploring.

In a succeeding experiment, we will then evaluate the effect of odorant addition on 1) the pigs’ interest in the enrichment material and 2) the occurrence of damaging behaviour (e.g. tail biting).The proposed project directly relates to creating a more sustainable agriculture by improving the welfare of growing and finishing pigs whilst improving farm economy.The project group includes researchers with specialist knowledge of pig behaviour, enrichment materials and production, and experts in large mammal olfaction and olfactory tests.

Stakeholders will be involved at an early stage to ascertain that the research setup meet their needs and to achieve implementation and dissemination of the results.