Lifetime reproductive performance in female pigs having distinct reasons for removal

This study describes the reasons for removal of female pigs distributed acr oss parity categories, and evaluates how parameters of lifetime productivit y differ for females having distinct removal reasons. The study analyzed li fetime records from 7973 females. Those records were obtained from 28 herds from the PigCHAMP((R)) research database having high-quality data during a five-year period. Female life expectancy corresponded to 3.3 parities at r emoval or 1.6 years spent in the breeding herd. The most common removal rea son was culling attributed to reproductive disorders (33.6%), followed by c ulling for sub-optimal Litter performance (20.6%). Sows culled for old age (8.7% of the removals) spent proportionally fewer days in non-productive pe riods, and produced more weaned pigs annually and over a lifetime than fema les removed for other reasons (P < 0.05). In contrast, females culled for r eproductive failure accumulated the largest proportion of non-productive da ys (NPD) during the time spent in the breeding herd, and produced the fewes t weaned pigs per lifetime and per year (P < 0.05). These findings indicate that culling for reproductive reasons is more common among low-parity fema les, which suggests that minimisation of NPD at early reproductive cycles i s crucial to optimise female lifetime reproductive efficiency. (C) 2000 Els evier Science B.V. All rights reserved.