Investigation Of The Reproductive Performance On Two Scale Pig Farms In Hunan

Sow productivity level is directly related to production efficiency of pig farm and mainly affected by litter size, number of piglets born alive, lactation length (days) and non-production days. In order to understand the sow prolificacy level of scale pig farms in Hunan Province, two medium-sized farms were selected to investigation of production levels of breeding sows, exploring the main factors affected the level of sow reproductivity. In the field study records of breeding sows of two pig farms were collected from2009to2011. The data from2790parities of farrowed sows were treated to analyse reproductive performance of sows. The results are as follows:The original breed farm:In Yorkshire herd the reproductive performance of average litter size, number of piglets born alive and number of piglets weaned were10.04±0.08,9.37±0.08,8.96±0.09respectively. The average farrow-to-farrow interval (days) was158.7±1.1. In Duroc herd the average litter size, number of piglets born alive and number of piglets weaned were9.51±0.20,8.51±0.22,7.71±0.24respectively. The average farrow-to-farrow interval (days) was149.6±2.9. In Landrace herd average litter size, number of piglets born alive and number of piglets weaned were10.30±0.17,9.45±0.17,8.87±0.24respectively. The average farrow-to-farrow interval (days) was161.7±4.0.The Yorkshire×Landrace sow herd:The reproductive performance of average litter size, number of piglets born alive and number of piglets weaned were10.91±0.12,9.81±0.13,7.81±0.13respectively. The average farrow-to-farrow interval (days) and number of litter per sow per year were171.8±2.6and2.19±0.02. Number of piglets weaned per sow per year was17.23±0.45.The results suggest that the prolificacy level of sows on original breed farm is limited to some extent by the performance of litter size, and strengthening breed improvement and feeding management will help to improve the reproductive performance, producing greater production efficiency. The reproductive productivity in Yorkshire×Landrace sow herd is affected by factors of the litter size and farrow-to-farrow interval (days), and will be enhanced by improving herd management.