The latest GB performance figures from Agrosoft show little change in the overall performance of the breeding herd in the 12 months to September 2013, accordig to BPEX’s Pig Market Weekly.
They show that the average number of pigs reared per sow was 22.90, which was almost unchanged from a year earlier. There wqas some improvement in the performance of the best producers, however, with the top third rearing 0.3 extra pigs/sow compared with last year, and the top 10% an extra 0.5 pigs/sow.
Litter sizes were also little changed, with an average of 11.55 born alive. There was a modest improvement in the farrowing rate, up from 81% to 82%. The productivity of indoor herds was also little changed on the year, but there was a modest improvement for outdoor herds, from 21.59 to 21.75 pigs reared per sow per year.
The figures also show that the recent improvement in feeding herd performance continued. The feed conversion ratio for the rearing herd (roughly 7-35kg) averaged 1.75 in the year to September 2013, 0.06 lower than 12 months earlier.
The finishing herd FCR fell to 2.78, slightly lower than the 2.82 last year. Daily weight gains were also better than last year for both rearing and finishing stages, at 495g/day and 816g/day respectively.