The availability of a rooting substrate may profoundly affect behaviour and welfare of pigs. Apart from their actual housing environment, also the conditions present in early life and individual characteristics may influence the behaviour of pigs. The present study investigated the relative importance of the housing environment during rearing and the actual housing environment on behaviour during the finishing phase,pathological lesions of the heart and stomach wall and weight gain in pigs with diverging coping characteristics. Pigs were reared either without a rooting substrate(barren, B) or in identical pens enriched with straw bedding (enriched, E). During the suckling period
piglets were subjected to the Backtest. The Backtest classification of pigs is, to a certain extent,predictive of their coping style. Each piglet was restrained in supine position for 1 min and its resistance (i.e. the number of escape attempts) was scored. Sixty high-resisting (HR) and 60 lowresisting(LR) pigs were selected. Half of these pigs were from barren and the other half from enriched rearing environments. Pigs were housed in groups of six (three HR and three LR) after