barber pig not only chews off hair, but swallows the hair as well!!

[conniehsc]

I have 5 female pigs living together, all but one were adopted, all of them entered the family in their adulthood. I have 1 peruvian, 3 abbys and 1 short-haired.

The 3rd pig (abby) I adopted was a barber pig. I've seen her chewing off hair from my peruvian. What I've just began to notice was, not only did she chew off the piece of hair, she ate that piece of hair as well. SHe literally bites off and swallows the chunck of hair! I've read that the behaviour of barbering was nothing to worry about, but I'm very worried about that hair being swallowed because I believe hair cannot be digested. Why is my pig doing this? What can I do to stop this kind of behaviour? She does it all the time! Thankyou very much for your time!

 

[Treen]

Some people think it's related to boredom, that it's a dominance behaviour, or that they do it when they don't have enough hay to chew on. But some pigs have plenty to do and plenty of hay and do it anyway!

Ingesting the hair doesn't seem to be a health issue anyway. Have a look at these links.
https://guinealynx.info/hairloss.html#barbering
(broken link removed)