The objective of this study was to compare the behaviour of piglets raised in two different rearing environments.
The animals were either removed from the sow at the young age of 3–6 days and raised in a commercially available artificial piglet rearing system (group size:7 piglets) or reared by the sow in a loose farrowing pen (7 focal piglets observed per litter).
The study was conducted on an experimental farm on which we had full control of the two different rearing environments and several batches of animals were included.
We specifically expected a high incidence of belly nosing in artificially raised piglets and were further interested in differences in manipulation of pen mates, play-fighting, and aggressive as well as resting behaviour