Pig Health & Welfare
Handling
Get your pigs hand tame i.e. tame enough for you to stroke them. It makes it much easier when you have to move them or carry out any veterinary treatment. Food's a great bribe - ours happily follow a rattling bucket into the trailer (and even from the trailer into the abattoir). Pigs seem to like human contact so it's quite easy to get them used to having a scratch - they enjoy it and happily lie on their sides to let you reach their bellies.
Exercise
Pigs will spend some of the day rootling around and some of it resting and sleeping. We helped ours to keep fit by providing them with a "Snak-a-ball". Now, this is actually marketed as a horse toy but, boy, does it work for pigs! The "Snak-a-ball" is a football sized, hollow, plastic ball (VERY heavy duty) with holes in it. Into the ball you put a pound of pig food, screw it shut and throw it into the pen. It doesn't take the pigs very long to work out that if they push the ball around, the food falls out.
We discovered this pig toy in 2004 and our boys had many hours of fun with it. The dogs also join in the football game - Dan isn't allowed to play because he isn't good enough!
Veterinary matters
It's worth checking that there is a vet in your area that deals with large animals before you buy your pigs. Many veterinary practices only deal with small animals - cats, dogs etc etc. With good husbandry and a modicum of luck, you won't need the services of a vet, particularly if you're only taking weaners to killing weight. It could well be a different story if you intend to breed pigs and James Herriots are pretty thin on the ground.
In our limited experience, we've never had to call the vet and we haven't carried out any routine veterinary treatment e.g. worming. We don't worm our pigs because we only have pigs on the land for 6 months of the year; allowing it to lie pig-free for 6 months should reduce or eliminate any worm burden. If you are going to keep pigs on the same land all year or are going to breed pigs, you will need to worm regularly.