- Nadja Böck, Hesse State Agricultural Agency
- Dr. Sabine Dippel, Friedrich Loeffler Institute, Celle
- Mirjam Lechner, UEG Hohenlohe
- Dr. Eckhard Meyer, Saxon State Office for the Environment, Agriculture and Geology
- Friedrich-Wilhelm Temme, farmer
- Dr. Karl-Heinz Tölle, ISN-Projekt GmbH
- Dr. Astrid van Asten, North Rhine-Westphalia Chamber of Agriculture
- Dr. Sabine Schütze, North Rhine-Westphalia Chamber of Agriculture
- Laura Schönberg, North Rhine-Westphalia Chamber of Agriculture
Funding information: The teaching materials were developed as part of the joint project ‘Netzwerk Fokus Tierwohl’, funding reference numbers 28N-4-013-01 to 28N-4-013-17, by the ‘No Tail Docking’ working group of the Animal Welfare Competence Centre for Pigs, and were adapted for teaching purposes by DLG e
.V. and FiBL Deutschland e.V. This joint project of the Chambers of Agriculture and agricultural institutions across all federal states aims to improve the transfer of knowledge into practice, with a view to making cattle, pig and poultry farms fit for the future through animal-welfare-friendly, environmentally sound and sustainable livestock farming.
The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture pursuant to a resolution of the German Bundestag.
All information and advice is provided without any warranty or liability.
Publisher
DLG e.V. Agricultural
Centre
Eschborner Landstraße 122
60489 Frankfurt am Main
FiBL Deutschland e.V. Animal Welfare
Division
Kasseler Straße 1a
60486 Frankfurt am Main
As of: 08/2023
© 2023
The rearing of uncut pigs is still considered the ultimate challenge. For years, scientists and practitioners have been trying to find solutions to successfully rear animals with intact curly tails. There is now a wealth of scientific evidence on the influencing factors and promising measures for rearing un-docked pigs. Nevertheless, there is no magic formula for preventing tail-biting, as caudophagia is a multifactorial problem that varies from farm to farm.
Through the ‘No Tail Docking’ working group of the Centre of Excellence for Pig Welfare, as part of the Focus on Animal Welfare network, teaching materials on the topic of avoiding tail docking have been produced for teachers at agricultural colleges and vocational schools, with the aim of incorporating the topic into lessons and raising awareness of the issue among the farmers of tomorrow.
To this end, sets of slides have been created, divided into eight chapters. Teachers can select the chapters they wish to integrate into their lessons.
An accompanying document lists the contents of the individual slides. In some cases, supplementary key points are provided which were shortened on the slides for methodological and didactic reasons. To facilitate a more in-depth exploration of the topic, background and additional information on the individual chapters has been compiled and linked. A variety of images have been integrated into the teaching materials for illustrative purposes. The image captions are also included in this accompanying document. Videos on many aspects of the husbandry of uncastrated pigs are available at www.ringelschwanz.info and can be used as supplementary material in the classroom.
In addition to the slide sets and the accompanying document, frequently asked questions have been compiled and answered by the ‘No Tail Docking’ working group of the Fokus Tierwohl network.