Benchmark Magazine Article Archive

High replacement rates for gilts and young sows have skewed current parity distributions on many farms towards younger females that haven’t reached their peak productivity.

Gilts are the foundation of the herd, which allows it to have the best farrowing rates and to have a total of 14–15 pigs in their first litter.

Achieving 30+ pigs per sow per year was once a lofty goal, but today it is a fairly common achievement thanks to genetic improvements in litter size.

After more than a year of financial losses, the North American swine sector is finally turning a corner.

One thing’s for sure: The world needs more Canadian pork. Despite the obviousness of that statement, there are many challenges to getting the product where people want it - where there’s consumer demand.

It is a known fact that sows currently do not produce enough milk to sustain the optimal growth of their litters. This is an area that is particularly important and challenging for pig researchers nowadays because the hyper-prolific genetic lines that were developed led to an even greater demand for sows’ milk.