New breeding goal strenghtens sows

From now on, future generations of sows will be even more robust and contribute to improved animal welfare and greater work satisfaction for those working with pigs.  

It all started with a PhD project supported by the Breeding & Genetics department at the Danish Agriculture and Food Council, where new and innovative methods for improving sow robustness were examined. After several years of intensive research, sow survival has now been implemented into the breeding goals. The trait is expected to bring about improvements down the generations with a greater number of surviving sows in Danish production.  

"Once again we can see why Danish pig production is among the world’s elite. It’s nothing less than groundbreaking research that lies behind the development of the new breeding goals. I’m also delighted with what we’ve achieved in adding a new trait to the breeding goals,” says Christian Fink Hansen, Sector Director, the Danish Agriculture and Food Council’s Pig Sector.

”It will take some years before the improvement reaches the production herds, but the implementation of piglet survival in 2022 is something that is already strengthening the sows at DanBred genetic farms.”

Groundbreaking research work 

The breeding work for sow survival is unique as data is now collected on sows in production herds. It has been a long process getting to this point, a fact that Tage Ostersen, Head of Department at Breeding & Genetics, points out:
”This is a groundbreaking piece of research that has been a major focus area in our department for the past five years.”

Annual improvements down through the generations

In recent years, DanBred has implemented a number of breeding measures that have contributed to more robustness and increased survival in Danish pig production. In 2022, DanBred introduced a new trait for piglet survival in the breeding goals. This trait has a positive 'knock-on' effect on sow survival due to the favourable genetic correlation between the traits. Sow survival is now being implemented as a separate trait in DanBred’s breeding goals - an important cornerstone that has fallen into place.

The progress in sow survival will become increasingly evident over the next 10 years. The length of time is due to the fact that the older sows in the production chain must be replaced with new generations of sows before the full effect of the breeding progress is evident in all DanBred sow herds.

”Although the breeding progress for sow survival will make a continuous impact, producers will already become aware of a difference based on the breeding measures introduced in recent years. This is because our models take account of all genetic correlations that exist between the breeding traits, and we have already introduced a new trait for piglet survival, which has a strong favourable link with sow survival,” explains Tage Ostersen.

Data from more sows contributes to better results 

One of the innovative elements in the new breeding goals is that data is collected on an annual basis from 100,000 crossbred sows from the production herds that use DanBred Nucleus Management®. Completely new statistical and technical methods for handling data have also been developed under the DanBred breeding programme. Moreover, data from the entire life of the sow is now included – from first service to final farrowing.

”We’ve focused on developing the right methods. This means that we can utilise the large amounts of data from 100,000 sows on an annual basis. With this data base and the fact that the trait is measured in production herds, we know that we will see greater breeding progress for sow survival in Danish herds,” says Tage Ostersen.