Pig Champ is a major swine production recording system in the United States. In 2019 they had data from 365 farms which they put in a Benchmarking database. Below is change in Pig Champ Sow Mortality mean average for 2019 and prior years.
| 2013 |
8.36% |
| 2015 |
8.94% |
| 2017 |
10.73% |
| 2019 |
12.31% |
It’s obvious the increase in industry sow mortality. This is an issue for profitability and animal welfare. This increase in our opinion is from the deterioration of proper phenotype selection by some Genetic Companies. Genesus believes you need to select for high productivity but also for robust physical characteristics. The proof is in the results.
Sow Mortality 2019
Pig Champ
12.31%
Mean 365 Farms |
Genesus Herds
4.99%
Mean 49 Farms |
Big Difference. Valuing a sow in production at $500 each leads to an obvious economic advantage to lower mortality. Sounder sows also bring higher cull salvage value (less or no boners). More robust sows also are more user friendly for stock people. On top of these points – dead sows don’t produce pigs.
Bottomline Genesus has lower sow mortality which leads to more profit.
