Group housing of pregnant sows increases aggression around feeding stations, which decreases their welfare. This study evaluated effects of learning an individual acoustic signal (SSP) as a call to go to the feeder on the behaviour of pregnant sows. In a test room, “learning” sows (n = 16) underwent four individual learning phases (duration: 27 days) to associate the SSP with an invitation to feed from a single-channel automatic feeder, followed by a group-learning evaluation phase (3 days, groups of four sows). The "naive" sows (n = 16) were also introduced individually to the test room (18 days) and then in groups of four (3 days) without following the learning procedure. The number of presentations to the feeder after emitting the SSP (success) or unknown sound signals (SSI, failure), the time taken to arrive at the feeder after a sound was emitted, the duration of feeding and the number of agonistic behaviours were recorded. Sows quickly learnt to associate a sound with feeding, but were unable to distinguish SSP and SSI completely in the time available, as shown by a high failure rate with SSI (P < 0.001). However, sows took longer to arrive at the feeder when an SSI was emitted instead of the SSP, indicating that they could partially distinguish the sounds (P < 0.001). The learning procedure increased feeding duration by 15 % (P < 0.001) and reduced the number of agonistic behaviours by 27 % (P < 0.05). In conclusion, using an individual sound as a call to feeding seems to modulate sows' feeding and social behaviours, thus contributing to their welfare.