Resources • Food sectors • Livestock • Pigs • Maintaining herd health

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Pigs

From initial registering your pigs through to the final product packaging and labelling.

Updated 7 June 2024

Maintaining herd health

Everyone keeping pigs, regardless of whether you are a smallholder/crofter/farmer, has legal responsibilities to care for their health and prevent disease from spreading. Before getting pigs, you have a legal duty to familiarise yourself with pig welfare guidance.

You should also set up plans to manage the pigs’ welfare, find a vet you can call on and know how to do a pig health check. If you live in a remote area, see the Highlands and Islands Veterinary Services Scheme for contacts of vets.

In addition, there are certifications which have stricter welfare requirements, including RSPCA Assured and organic, which affect how you can market pork (see ’Membership & certifications’).

Biosecurity plan

Biosecurity means setting up and following a plan of actions that reduce the risk of your pigs getting disease and spreading it between themselves or beyond the herd.

Your biosecurity plan should include actions for:

Reducing the risk of people, equipment and vehicles bringing in disease
Reducing the risk of wild boars or new pigs bringing in disease
Regular cleaning of pig housing and paddocks (see ’Cleaning’)
Contingency in case of disease outbreaks (see ’Pig diseases & parasites’)
How to safely store and dispose dead pigs and animal by-products (see ’Pig carcasses & waste’)

In particular, you should consider African swine fever (ASF) and porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus (PEDv). These are emerging diseases that the pork industry is trying to prevent from establishing in the UK through biosecurity measures (see ’Notifiable diseases’).

The Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) has a useful overview with various resources for planning biosecurity on pig farms.

You should review your biosecurity plan regularly and have it ready for inspection.

Pig movement restrictions

When you move pigs to your farm/croft, you cannot move any pigs off your farm for 20 days — this is a legally required standstill period. Any cattle, sheep or goats cannot be moved for 13 days. If you move cattle, sheep or goats to your farm, you cannot move any pigs for 13 days.

You can get an exemption for the rest of your herd by isolating incoming animals, which you can apply for with this form to your local RPID office. Holdings authorised by APHA are exempt from the standstill period, find out more from your local APHA office.

Read about pig movement restrictions and isolation measures on the Scottish Government website. Check ‘Moving pigs’ for records you need to keep when moving pigs.

Health & welfare plan

You should create a plan which outlines how you will care for your herd’s health and welfare throughout their lifetime. Your biosecurity plan will be part of this, but the health & welfare plan focusses on your pigs rather than controlling disease.

The health & welfare plan should cover regular herd inspections, vaccinations, treating disease and parasites and controlling behavioural problems. You should also include contingency planning for emergency situations and information about euthanising pigs.

Create the health plan with your local vet and review it with them annually.

Find out more:

The Scottish Pig Health Scheme

If you are part of the QMS pork assurance scheme, you are automatically enrolled on the Scottish Pig Health Scheme. This scheme monitors pig carcasses after slaughter for signs of diseas, and sends you and your vet quarterly reports on your herd.

Get an idea of how the scheme works by reading the AHDB guidance on their Pig Health Scheme.

Pig health checks

You should monitor your pigs daily for sigs of illness: this pig inspection checklist and guide for doing a pig health check are good resources to start with.

You can also use Body Condition Scoring to quickly assess the condition of an individual pig. In condition scoring, you use your hands to assess much muscle and fat the animal has. AHDB has a guide on how to condition score sows.

Condition Scoring of Pigs, DEFRA (downloads a PDF)

Pig diseases

Pigs are affected by many diseases, and you should focus on disease prevention by implementing herd health and biosecurity plans. Disease can lead to death of pigs, including abortion in sows.

You must attend to pigs appearing to be ill or injured without delay and call the vet if they do not get better or get worse. Ill or injured pigs may need to be separated into a ’hospital’ pen.

The NADIS pig diseases directory is a useful overview of pig health and disease.

Further resources:

Notifiable diseases

If you suspect that your pig has any of the notifiable diseases, you are legally required to immediately tell your local APHA Field Services team by contacting them.

Notifiable disease affecting pigs:

You must also report suspected cases of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

Some notifiable diseases are ’exotic’, which means that they are not usually present in the UK. They are controlled more rigorously and you can sign up to receive alerts from APHA on exotic disease outbreaks.

’Animal diseases: notifiable, reportable and non-notifiable diseases’, Scottish Government

Control of notifiable diseases

To control notifiable avian diseases, APHA has powers to impose disinfection measures and movement restrictions, and cull animals. These measures apply to you regardless of how many pigs you have.

If your pigs need to be culled, you will receive compensation but this is only for healthy animals.

However, if your keep pig breeds that are considered rare/at risk, you can apply for an exemption from culling. To do this, you must apply to APHA with a contingency plan for your breed at risk, which demonstrates that sparing the pigs will not undermine disease control.

Pig parasites

Internal and external parasites are common for pigs, and you should familiarise yourself with the symptoms and know how to them early on.

Common pig parasites include worms, mange and lice. Many worms thrive in muddy conditions, and when temperatures rise in the spring you should be particularly vigilant.

Common chicken parasites include red mite, lice, and worms. Many parasites activate when temperatures rise in the spring, and you should be vigilant during this time with managing their pasture (see ’Pasture management’).

Medicines

Sometimes it is necessary to medicate your pigs to prevent or cure disease. You should not use antibiotics routinely and as prescribed by a vet, to avoid disease-causing bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics.

In organic systems, veterinary medicines may not be given routinely but only when there is a clear risk or evidence of disease. Organic producers must have an animal health and welfare plan agreed with their vet.

You can legally use only veterinary medicines authorised by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate – see the directory of approved veterinary medicines. Some can only be prescribed by a vet, and organic certification may restrict which medicines you can use.

You must also keep records of any medicines used — see ’Keeping records’.

Using veterinary medicines

Veterinary medicines can be hazardous to human health if handled incorrectly, and their safe use is controlled by law if you sell pork from your pigs. This applies to you if you are self-employed and to anyone else working at your holding.

Follow this guide by the Health and Safety Executive on how to use animal medicines safely and comply with your legal duties.

You must wait until the end of the withdrawal period specified in the product before eating or selling any pork from your herd. Read more about medicine residues on Food Standards Scotland.

Worming

Instead of using wormers routinely, it is a good idea to test your pigs regularly for worms to check if they need to be wormed. You can do this by buying a worm egg count kit which is sent to a laboratory for testing. Read about faecal egg counts.

Vaccinations

Vaccinating pigs, even if you have a small herd, is important for preventing and controlling diseases but not legally compulsory. Some vaccines are administered to piglets, and some vaccinations can be given to breeding sows to protect piglets.

You should design a vaccination regime for your herd together with a vet as part of the health plan (see ’Health & welfare plan’). You can vaccinate pigs yourself and vaccinations are usually given as an intramuscular injection with a needle.

Resources on pig vaccines:

NADIS has published a two-part guide on vaccinations for a smaller herd: Part 1 & Part 2.
RUMA (Responsible Use of Medicines in Agriculture) has a guide on designing and administering a pig vaccination program for your herd.

If introducing new pigs to your herd, check if the breeder has given them any vaccinations. Do not mix vaccinated and unvaccinated pigs — this can compromise the effectiveness of vaccines.

Tail biting

Tail biting is an abnormal behaviour for pigs, where bite and chew the tails of other pigs. It can cause severe injuries to other pigs, which may develop into illnesses that require euthanising the animal. Other pigs are prone to learn this behaviour and it can spread through the herd, so it is important to address tail biting early on.

Tail biting can occur in any pig rearing system, but risk factors include lack of space, boredom and stress.

If tail biting is very severe, you may need to use tail docking to control it (see ’Mutilations’). However, this must only be used as a last resort — separating pigs and addressing welfare issues such as housing or feed must be tried first.

’Tail docking and tail biting in pigs’, AHDB

Mutilations

Mutilating your pigs is defined as removing or damaging sensitive parts of their body, and is prohibited by law. Some procedures are exempt for health or management purposes, but you should check with your certifying body if they are allowed.

These exempted procedures must never be done routinely — you must have evidence and a vet’s opinion/permission that they are required.

In organic systems it is prohibited to undertake teeth clipping, castration, tail docking or nose-ringing. Nose-ringing is done to prevent pigs from rooting (which is an essential natural behaviour). Some breeds are much more ferocious rooters and you will need to take this into account when selecting a breed. Big rooters will need more space and regular rotation of grazing areas.

’Permitted procedures’, Pig Welfare Guidance, Scottish Government

Tail docking

Docking your pig’s tail is only legally permitted as a last resort to control tail biting.

A veterinary surgeon must give written approval for tail docking. To request this, you must keep records of how you have addressed tail biting and present evidence about the issue to a vet.

Tail docking of pigs older than 7 days can only be done by a vet and the pig must be under anaesthetic.

Teeth clipping

Piglets are born with sharp teeth with which they compete for the best teat on the sow. Clipping these teeth to remove the sharp end is only legally permitted as a last resort to control wounds to the sow or other piglets (see ’Piglets’).

You must seek a vet’s opinion before clipping teeth. This can only be done to piglets under 8 days old. Read guide on teeth clipping by AHDB.

Castration

If surgical castration of pigs is necessary and cannot be avoided, it must never be done by tearing. Immunocastration vaccines are an alternative to surgical castration.

Castration of pigs older than 8 days must be done by a vet and the pig must be under anaesthetic and given painkillers afterwards. Local anaesthetic and painkillers are also best practice for younger piglets.

Pigs should not be routinely castrated to avoid ’boar taint’. Boar taint is a bad flavour caused by hormones that some people taste in the meat of uncastrated boars. Some certifications/assurance scheme explicitly ban castrating pigs to avoid board taint, and slaughtering pigs at a younger age is used in the UK instead.

Euthanising pigs

It can be necessary to euthanise a critically ill or injured pig on your farm to prevent suffering. It is illegal to send a diseased pig to slaughter, so euthanising animals must be done on your farm/croft.

It is also illegal to cause avoidable suffering to an animal when euthanising it, and only a trained person should do this. Get training from your vet or course providers like the Humane Slaughter Association (HSA).

When euthanised, pigs must be stunned unconscious until death.

The Casualty Pig booklet published by the Pig Veterinary Society has important guidance on how to assess whether a pig should be emergency slaughtered and how to comply with your legal duties.

Read also HSA’s guidance on how to euthanise pigs:

Pig carcasses & waste

Pig carcasses, parts and other material coming from your pigs that is not meant for humans to eat are called animal by-products. The disposal of animal by-products (ABPs) is legally regulated depending on their health risks.

This means that you cannot dispose of dead pigs, pig parts or pig manure as general waste. They must be sent for disposal by an approved knacker, hunt kennel, maggot farm, incinerator, or renderer.

You can make your own arrangement with the collector or use the National Fallen Stock Company which connects farmers/crofters and collectors. You must store ABPs securely in clearly marked containers until they are collected. However, if you are in a remote area, you are allowed to burn or bury ABPs.

With pig manure, you can also apply it to land, compost, anaerobically digest it or make it into fertiliser with certain restrictions.
More details and instructions about different animal by-products and fallen stock is published by DEFRA.

Fallen livestock reporting and disposal

Dead livestock must be disposed of appropriately. In most of Scotland, they cannot be buried or burnt in the open because of the risk of disease spread through groundwater or air pollution. Fallen stock must be disposed without ‘undue delay’ (usually within 48 hours of death). There are a number of disposal options available.

Some remote areas of Scotland have been granted exception to bury dead animals if other disposal options are not available. For more details of the areas and methods of disposal please see the guidance.

Pigs