Providing environmental enrichment to farmed animals such as pigs is very important to safeguard their welfare. Current legislation specifies that all pigs must have permanent access to a sufficient quantity of material to enable proper investigation and manipulation activities. Straw has always been regarded as a functional form of enrichment for pigs, but can be difficult to use in slatted housing systems. Alternative enrichment objects might be acceptable substitutes, provided they are designed according to characteristics which pigs find important (Van de Weerd et al., 2003), as pigs may lose interest in simple devices. Most enrichment studies have focussed on immediate effects on behaviour, but it is also important to find out whether there are critical periods where providing enrichment will have effects later in life. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether early life enrichment had an effect on the behavioural development of pigs. To assess this, pigs were tested on an Elevated Plus Maze (EPM) at 10 weeks of age. The EPM is a well-validated anxiety model in rodents, which has more recently been used in pigs. It provides a way to separate fear of novelty (avoidance of open arms) and activity-related elements (entries into closed arms) (Anderson et al., 2000).