In pig production, new housing systems limiting tail biting in group housed pigs need to be developed. Following this, on nine pig farms pigs were given a social toy as an enrichment object, which has never been tested in the practice before. By this approach we gained comprehensive ethological knowledge under commercial conditions. We included farmers from Prekmurje and Ptuj region of Slovenia in the development of technological innovations enabling animal friendlier rearing conditions and safer food for consumers. We followed two groups of pigs per farm, one with short tails and the other one with intact tails. In the intact pig groups, we found a tendency with a larger number of damaged tails during the fattening period (Hi-square= 3.27; P= 0.07), but these pigs grew statistically significantly faster during the period from moving into the fattening facility and 20 days of fattening (pigs with intact tails: 688.51 ± 42.45 g/day; short-tail pigs: 639.59 ± 42.45 g/day; F-value= 7.41; P= 0.03). Groups with intact tails did not have a statistically significant increase in the number of exclusions of animals and no smaller daily body weight, which indicates that pigs with whole tails can be raised in rearing conditions practiced in Slovenia without making changes in rearing management.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4330632