Benchmarking for reproductive performance and lifetime performance of female pigs on high-performing farms in Southern Europe

Benchmarking has been widely practiced worldwide in the swine industry to improve farm management and productivity. Best practice benchmarking is defined as identifying those practices and processes associated with superior efficiency and performance. In the best-practice benchmarking for breeding farms, measurements in high-performing and ordinary farms have been used to provide values of target performance, using the 10th or 25th upper percentile of the performance measurements as the target values. The objective of the present study was to characterize reproductive and lifetime performance of female pigs on high-performing farms in Southern Europe.

The data included 647,498 service and lifetime records of 121,103 females on 125 farms between 2008 and 2013. Annualized lifetime pigs weaned per sow was determined for each sow. Two herd productivity farm categories were defined on the basis of the upper 25th percentile of the herd means of annualized lifetime pigs weaned per sow: high-performing farms (> 25.0 pigs) and ordinary farms (< 25.0 pigs). To compare the measurements of female pigs between the two herd productivity groups, two-level mixed-effects logistic regression models and linear mixed-effects models were applied to the data.

Mean values of annualized lifetime pigs weaned per sow in the high-performing and ordinary farms were 24.4 and 20.4 pigs, respectively. For lifetime performance measurements, parity numbers at removal, lifetime pigs born alive and non-productive days on high-performing farms were 4.9, 60.2 pigs and 78.5 days, respectively. The high-performing farms had 0.4 higher parity at removal, 6.8 more lifetime pigs born alive and 25.2 fewer lifetime non-productive days than the ordinary farms. However, there were no differences between the two farm productivity groups for gilt age at-first-mating (P = 0.81) or culling risk due to pregnancy failure (P = 0.65). Farrowing rates and pigs born alive on the high-performing farms were 86.2-91.3% and 11.7-13.0 pigs, respectively. Across all parity groups the high-performing farms had a 5.5-6.5% higher farrowing rates and had 4.2-6.5 more pigs born alive than the ordinary farms (P < 0.05). However, there was no difference between the two farm productivity groups for return intervals (P = 0.14).

Superior lifetime performance measurements on high-performing farms were based on higher farrowing rates, more pigs born alive, better management for reducing non-productive days and lower parity numbers at removal.

Disclosure of Interest: None Declared.