Robust breeds for organic pig production

Summary

Robust animals – here piglets – are important for the organic production, since vital and healthy animals are one of the pillars for animal welfare and comfort in the daily manage-ment. One of the key issues in the conventional breeding system is a high litter size. The average is 15 – 16 live born, but quite often more than 20 piglets are seen in practice. The organic production system uses the same genetic as the conventional because the production scale is too small to run its own breeding system.
The organic regulation offers a frame for a wide range of high level of animal welfare pa-rameters (free range, prolonged nursing period and access to roughage, just to mention some). However, at the same time it has to face a major problem with high mortality among the piglets. This conflicts with the aim of high animal welfare, and also stresses the staff.
A high litter size is partly responsible for the mortality rate for piglets. The sow normally has 13 – 14 teats – which makes a litter equalization needed, when there are born more piglets than there are teats. The equalisation management tool works, but the question is what to do, when there are either extra sows or teats available? The conventional production solve the challenge by practising “nursing sows”, meaning that, when a sow has brought up her own litter, these are weaned and the sow “adopts” some younger piglets. This kind of management is difficult in the organic production, because the sow has already had 7 weeks lactation and also it can be difficult to make the sow accept new piglets, because it is not allowed to fix organic sows. This has led to a request from some of the organic pig farmers: Can we breed sows where the litter size is balanced to the number of teats? The born piglets should also be both strong and vital.