title: Cognitive enrichment in piglet rearing: an approach to enhance animal welfare and to reduce aggressive behaviour.
abstract: It is known that pigs raised in enriched environments express less aggressive behaviour. For this reason, a new method of cognitive environmental enrichment was experimented at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Germany. In the first phase, 78 suckling piglets were trained to learn the link between a sound given by an electronic feeder and a feed reward in the form of chocolate candies during a period of 8 days. In the second phase, the same piglets were used in resident-intruder tests to verify the potential of the feeding system to interrupt aggressive behaviour. The analysis of all training rounds revealed that piglets learned the commands during 8 days of training and the interest of the piglets increased within training days (P < 0.05). In the resident-intruder test, 79.5% of aggressive interactions were broken by feeder activation. In interactions where either the aggressor or the receiver reacted, a high number of fights were stopped (96.7% versus 93.1%) indicating that it was not relevant if the aggressor or the receiver responded to the feeder activation. We conclude that the electronic feeding system has the potential to be used as cognitive enrichment for piglets, being suitable for reducing aggressive behaviour in resident-intruder situations.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Animal Hygiene, Animal Welfare and Farm Animal Behaviour, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Foundation, Bünteweg 17p, 30559 Hannover, Germany.
authors.forename: Lilia Thays
authors.initials: LT
authors.lastname: Sonoda
authors.forename: Michaela
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fels
authors.forename: Sally
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rauterberg
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Viazzi
authors.forename: Gunel
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ismayilova
authors.forename: Maciej
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Oczak
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bahr
authors.forename: Marcella
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Guarino
authors.forename: Erik
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Vranken
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Berckmans
authors.forename: Jörg
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hartung