Minnesota's Swine & U

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Hello and welcome to Minnesota's Swine and U Podcast Series. A University of Minnesota Extension Swine program. Today's podcast is a research update on identifying the tail biter in a pen of growing, finishing pigs with intact tails.

My name is Sarah Sheik Belke, your host and I'm a swine Extension Educator with the University of Minnesota. Joining me today is Courtney Archer, who is a PhD candidate in the Department of Animal Science.

Welcome, Courtney.

Courtney A Archer:
Thank you for having me.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
So to get us started today. Do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself, including what faculty that you are working with on this project.

Courtney A Archer:
Yes, so I'm originally from West Texas. I completed my undergraduate studies at Texas Tech University, and then I stayed at Texas Tech to pursue a master's degree under Dr. John Mcglone, where my research focused on reducing aggression and increasing feed intake in newly weaned piglets.

And then in 2022, I had the opportunity to move up north to begin my PhD project here at the University of Minnesota, under Dr. Yuzhi Li and Dr. Lee Johnston.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Great. So the opportunity that you mentioned was that did Dr. Yuzhi Li reach out to you, or was there, I don't know, other things that brought you up North, because it's not always that folks from the Southern States want to venture North. They tend to be scared of our winters up here.

Courtney A Archer:
Yes, it was definitely a change. And my 1st winter here was very tough. It's kind of a little bit of a funny story. I saw Dr. Yuzhi Li's advertisement for actually her hybrid rye project, her organic swine hybrid rye project. And so I reached out to her, asking about that.

But once we started conversation and started. She kind of heard what interests me. She said, “Actually, I have this tail biting project, and I think it would be great for you.” And so we talked about it, and I agreed I fell in love. I fell in love with the project as soon as we started talking about it. And so that's how my journey started getting here.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Well, great! We're yeah happy to have you here in Minnesota, and I'm sure that Dr. Yuzhi Li, as well as Dr. Lee Johnston are happy to have you as well working on this project.

So I've just kind of referred to it kind of like as a title. So can you tell us a little bit more specifically, what will you be sharing with us today?

Courtney A Archer:
Yeah, today I'll be sharing insights from my Phd research on identifying the tail biter in growing, finishing pig pens. Tail biting presents a major welfare concern in the swine in the industry, and my study aims to pinpoint the individual pigs responsible for this behavior. So the individual pigs who are the tail biters specifically at the early stage of this behavior because by identifying these pigs sooner we can implement timely interventions to mitigate the issues, and to try and improve the overall welfare of these pigs.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Sounds like it will be interesting, and I look forward to asking you more about it. But first we should probably give a shout out to the funding source because I like to make sure that everyone knows that this research that we do, whether it's at the University of Minnesota or other universities can't be done unless we have got a funding source. So are you able to share whether who or what entities funded this project.

Courtney A Archer:
Yeah. So the research is funded by the USDA Competitive Grants Animal Welfare program. And then myself, I'm funded. A large portion of my program is funded by the National Pork Pork Board, Pork Checkoff. Both organizations kind of saw the need for this type of project, and so they allowed us and helped us to do this project.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Thank you to those funding sources. So now let's get back to talking about the research project.

Can you give a brief introduction to it, explaining why it was a valuable project to do?

Courtney A Archer:
Yes. So over the last couple of years we've seen a pretty big shift in how consumers think about raising pigs. More people are becoming aware of animal welfare issues, and they're growing pressure to move away from practices like tail docking. In fact, in Europe they've already banned tail docking, and it's likely that US consumers will push for something similar soon within the US. This kind of creates both challenges as well as opportunities for producers as they adapt their management practices.

Focusing on tail biting, tail biting behavior is a pretty serious problem in farms. It's not only harmful to the pig, but it can cause financial loss to the producers and complicates welfare management.

My project looks at the gap within the research, while many studies have focused on preventing and treating tail biting. There hasn't been much success in figuring out which individual pigs are actually doing the biting, Because unless you're in the barn watching the behavior. It's hard to identify which pig in the pen is your actual tail biter.

So by identifying these pigs, we can reduce tail biting incidences and improve overall management, especially as the industry evolves to meet these changing consumer expectations.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
So now you have me curious to know how you completed this study. I'm only envisioning that there might have been cameras involved. But I'll let you explain that as to how you completed this study.

Courtney A Archer:
Yes, this was a very long project. Lots and lots of cameras, lots of video footage. This study was a very large USDA project. It was actually done in 3 phases. But I'm only going to discuss 2 phases because this project was a collaboration with the University of Nebraska. And so the 3rd phase was done by a student there.

In phase one. We looked at how group size affects tail damage. So back in 2022, when I first started we worked with 432 pigs that had intact tails, so they were not tail docked. We divided them into 2 groups: a small group, which would consist of 9 pigs per pen, or a large group, which consisted of 18 pigs per pen. And then over 14 weeks we measured things like growth rates, tail damage. So every single pig, every 432 pigs that we had we would tail score them.

So we had a score from 0 to 4. 0 would show that there was no tail damage, no evidence of tail damage, and then 4 would be very, very extreme evidence of tail damage.

And then we used a system called NUtrack, which is kind of precision livestock technology, where it would track the behavior of these pigs, so we would see behaviors such as lying down, standing, eating, drinking, and moving around.

We also kept an eye on mortality and morbidity and monitored tail, biting outbreaks within the pen. For the small group we would consider an outbreak depending on if one pig had tail injury, and then for large groups, it would need to be 2 or more pigs that had tail injuries.

And then by analyzing all this data, including video footage, pigs behavior. We're hoping to spot early signs of tail biting and to see how group size can play a role within tail biting behavior.

And then our next project in phase 2. We focused on the influence of litter origin on tail damage. So this project ran in the summer of 2023, and we used 251 pigs with intact tails. We split these pigs up into 3 groups, all based on litter origin. So group one. They were all litter mates, or all pigs within the pen came from the same sow. The second treatment were non-litter mates, or all of the pigs within the pen came from separate sows, and our last treatment group was half litter mates. So half of the pigs in the pen came from sow one and then the other half of the pigs in the pen came from sow two.

And then, like phase one, we tracked growth rates, tail damage and behavior with our computer vision. But this time we added another component. We looked at the immunological effects potential effects of tail biting. So if a tail biting outbreak occurred, we would collect blood samples from all pigs within the pen, where we saw evidence of tail biting, and then we would identify a control pen for blood samples as well.

And then these samples were used to analyze stress and immune responses during these tail biting outbreaks.

We also continued using that NUtrack system in this phase to track their behavior so that we can hopefully develop a neural network to identify tail biting behaviors and predict outbreaks. We added a level of social network analysis to see how each pig's social position within the group can potentially influence tail biting behavior

So essentially overall. We combined behavioral, immune, and tech driven approaches to try and identify tail biters and understand early signs of potential tail biting outbreaks.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
I'm envisioning that you are probably swimming in data to analyze.

Courtney A Archer:
So many excel sheets. Yes.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Well, before we get to you sharing kind of that, I'm really curious about the NUtrack system. Can you explain how that system works and why computer vision technology is important in this kind of research that you were doing?

Courtney A Archer:
Yes. So this NUtrack system that we're using was actually created by the University of Nebraska. By Dr. Ty Schmidt and Dr. Benny Moat.

This is a state of the art computer vision platform that allows us to monitor and track individual pig behavior in real time. This system uses a 4k HD camera that is placed above the pen to capture both color and infrared images at a rate of 5 frames per second. These images are then processed by an advanced neural network, which can detect the position, movement, and orientation of each pig within the pen.

It's even been able to track activities like eating, drinking, standing, sitting, and lying down based on the pig's body position. What makes this technology even more powerful is that it can automatically identify each pig by reading their ear tag and assign a behavioral profile to each individual pig.

Computer vision is critical for research like mine trying to identify tail biters because it allows us to collect an enormous amount of data without needing to physically observe pigs for hours on end, watching hours and hours of behavioral video.

This type of monitoring is far more precise than human observation alone, and it enables us to detect subtle behavioral changes that might be early indicators of tail biting.

By continuously tracking behaviors. We can also look for patterns or signs that would otherwise go unnoticed in shorter observational periods.

So this technology allows us to shift from reactive management. Addressing the problem after tail damage has occurred to a more proactive management, where we can intervene early and prevent outbreaks before they escalate.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
So it sounds like with the NUtrack system. It was basically developed for research for doing these types of observations. Would that be correct?

Courtney A Archer:
Correct. Yes, the ability of this software to essentially identify the pig. Give us a profile of the behavior of that pig, whether it's in an hour, a day, a week. That saves us a lot of time having to watch videos. And one of the goals of our project is to train the AI system of this technology to eventually be able to identify tail biting for us.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
So what do you think are the practical applications of your findings for farmers and the pork industry as a whole?

Courtney A Archer:
Yeah. So my research has real world applications for both the pig as well as the farmer. The biggest takeaways is that by identifying early signs of tail biting and the pigs that are performing these behaviors, we can provide interventions to increase the welfare for the pig. But then, at the same time when we see tail biting outbreaks or tail biting behavior that causes profitability to the farmer. So they're having to take time and money to pull these pigs from the pen, put them into sick pens, monitor them. Whenever we see pigs that have tail biting injuries they're going to grow slower. They're not going to eat as much. And so our farmers are also going to see some problems on their end when we have tail biting outbreaks.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
So in the US tail docking is a common practice to prevent tail biting.

Knowing that, how is tail biting still a problem? And how does your research help address this issue?

Courtney A Archer:
You're right, Sarah. Tail docking is widely used in the Us. To reduce the risk of tail biting, but even with tail docking, tail biting still happens, the behavior does not stop just because we tail dock. Docking the tails shortens the tails, but it doesn't stop the behavior or prevent harm altogether.

Tail biting is a very complicated issue that comes from things like boredom, frustration, maybe competition among pigs within a pen. So docking doesn't really address the root cause of the tail biting behavior. Plus tail docking is, as we discussed earlier, becoming more of a controversial issue, especially with growing concerns about animal welfare.

It's already been banned in several countries in Europe, and as more US consumers start demanding higher welfare standards, producers might face pressures to move away from docking. So that's why it's important to understand tail biting behavior and find other ways to manage it, so that in the future, if tail docking becomes banned or highly discouraged, my research wants to provide guidance to farmers to help them transition during that period.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Or I would assume as well since you mentioned, you know, even though in the industry tail docking is still allowed in the US, still you have pigs that chew on tails whether those tails are docked or not. So I would assume your research is still relevant here in helping the industry as well.

Courtney A Archer:
Correct. Yeah, many times. What we see is, if you keep the tail on a pig, so a pig that has a tail, the biting injury is more towards the tip of the tail, whereas if you dock a tail and there's not a tail there, then you have these pigs that are biting the stump of the tail, and potentially even kind of going into the ham of the pig. And so it can cause even worse issues when you see tail biting, and you have a docked tail.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Yeah. So I guess, going back to the original kind of background of the project. It is an issue in the industry.

Courtney A Archer:
Very much. So. Yes.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
So to wrap up our discussion here. Are there any closing remarks that you would like to make, or points that maybe you forgot about and want to bring up now?

Courtney A Archer:
I think I would just really want to highlight how exciting this study is for swine welfare as a whole, while there's still a lot to learn. Being able to spot the tail biters early on gives us a huge advantage in improving both animal welfare and farm management, and myself and my team. We're just excited to see how this research develops and how it can really help producers and farmers in the future.

Sarah Schieck Boelke:
Well, thank you, Courtney, for sharing your research on tail biting and growing, finishing pigs.

And I want to thank everyone for listening to the University of Minnesota Swine and U Podcast, this has been Sarah Schieck Boelke, Swine Extension Educator along with Courtney Archer, Animal Science, PhD candidate.

To further connect with the University of Minnesota Extension Swine Program, please visit the swine specific web pages on our website at www.extension.umn.edu/swine. And on those pages you should find connections to our blog and Facebook page.

To learn more about research being done by our swine faculty in veterinary medicine, please visit their Swine in Minnesota Blog at www.umnswinenews.com.