The Effect of the Size of the Litter in Which the Sow Was Born on Her Lifetime Productivity

Abstract

Improvement of lowly heritable traits is difficult, efforts must be made to take full advantage of the available information sources to improve them. The objective of the study was to determine the effect of the size of the litter in which the sow was born on her lifetime reproductive performance. Data on 22,683 litters were used to analyse the lifetime reproductive performance of 5623 Polish Large White sows. The sows from small litters (≤9) were on average the oldest at first farrowing, had the shortest herd life, the smallest number of litters, and the smallest sized litters (p ≤ 0.01). A positive relationship was established between the mean number of offspring born per litter and size of the litter in which the sow was born (p ≤ 0.01). For a sow to produce at least seven piglets per 100 days of reproduction, gilts from litters of at least 12 piglets should be selected for breeding.

Impact of selection for birth weight variability on reproductive longevity: A mice model

“…They would both be understood as two different measures of the same reproductive longevity concept under a common IBP, therefore, not being exactly the same, as the low line had in addition a significant 21% lower IBP (Table 2). Both show interesting findings for animal production: in pigs, a sow's production persistency and fertility in successive parities should be analyzed separately but both improved since the key to increase the overall herd efficiency is to increase both the length of the sow's herd productive life and the number of piglets reared per litter (Warda et al., 2021). This was reinforced by the significantly higher probability of the low line to experiment a new parturition according to the longevity analysis (Figure 4).…”

“…Lamb survival and ewe longevity would be improved by implementing genetic selection programmes in addition to the improvement of management practices (Hossein‐Zadeh et al., 2018). Fertility and longevity are traits of economic and welfare importance in livestock species (Martínez‐Paredes et al., 2018) and particularly for prolific animals like rabbits (Penadés et al., 2020) and pigs (Warda et al., 2021). Factors that affect the survival and fitness of females are of great interest to develop strategies (for breeding, nutrition, genetics, etc) that ensure compliance with the specific values of these traits and reduce the risk of females being eliminated from the herd.…”

Identifying Early-Life Behavior to Predict Mothering Ability in Swine Utilizing NUtrack System

“…Thus, breeding goals related to GL must be defined within the framework of production goals specific to an operation. Similarly, past research on number born alive (NBA) provides mixed results, with certain studies suggesting gilts raised in larger litters endure lasting negative environmental effects while other studies show that females from small litters of origin were culled earliest and produced small litters [ 13 , 14 , 15 ]. Moreover, preweaning mortality may result from negative maternal behaviors such as impartiality to piglet distress calls, method of laying down, and savaging, negatively impacting total number weaned (NW) [ 16 , 17 , 18 ].…”