Pigs E-Book

Neville Beynon

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 322

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Pigs - A guide to Management - Second Edition provides a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of pig-keeping: how pigs have developed, the influence of the market on the breeds and pig-keeping systems, nutrition, the pig and its environment, reproduction, piglet birth, survival, growth and development, and the important place of artificial insemination in both modern commercial production and maintaining our rare breeds. The welfare, care and managemet of the pig through to its sale as a finished pig, along with that of the breeding sow, gilt, boar, is a central theme. Covers all aspects of pig husbandry and provides a comprehensive guide to developing pig management skills and illustrates the range of pedigree and commercial pig breeds and how they are influenced by the market. Fully illustrated with over 120 colour photographs including the current BPA-registered pig breeds.

Leseprobe

Pigs

A Guide to Management

Second Edition

Neville Beynon

THE CROWOOD PRESS

First published in 1990 by The Crowood Press Ltd Ramsbury, Marlborough Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2014

Revised edition 2014

© Neville Beynon 1990 and 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84797 753 3

Illustration credits

Photographs by Neville Beynon unless otherwise stated.Line drawings by Aileen Hanson.

Disclaimer

The author and the publisher do not accept responsibility in any manner whatsoever for any error or omission, nor any loss, injury, liability, or adverse outcome of any kind incurred as a result of the use of the information contained in this book, or reliance on it. Readers who are in doubt about any aspect of pig keeping, or the health and welfare of their pigs, should seek professional advice.

Typeset by The Manila Typesetting Company

Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Ltd.

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

  1    The Pig and its Development

  2    The Market and its Influence on Breeds and Systems

  3    The Nutritional Needs of the Pig

  4    The Pig and its Environment

  5    Reproduction

  6    Piglets – Survival, Growth and Development

  7    The Finishing Pig

  8    Sow and Gilt Management

  9    Health and Welfare

10    Showing and Carcase Competitions

11    Future Developments

Appendix I

Appendix II

Useful Addresses

Chapter References

Further Reading

Glossary

Index

Foreword

The principal reason for keeping pigs is to provide high quality protein foods for humans. Indeed it is forecast that global pig production needs to increase by some 25 per cent in the next twenty years to meet the demands of an expanding human population, and technologies and knowledge must be developed to meet this increasing need.

In this respect, pig production is a dynamic and ever-changing industry, which needs to take account of the many complex interactions that influence the growth and development of the animal. These include genetics, nutrition, health, welfare and the environment, as well as market requirements and public awareness. All of these are discussed in the current book written by Neville Beynon. This book is the second and updated edition of Pigs – A Guide to Management, first published in 1990 and which proved very popular. Since then our knowledge of pig production has increased through many major and fascinating developments, especially in the management and production of pigs, and many of these are presented in this publication.

This book is intended for those who wish to know more about the current practices and strategies involved in keeping pigs. It is not meant for ‘professionals’, although they may find it extremely useful. It is aimed at students, those wishing to know more about pig production, and those starting out in the business, and it is written with this objective in mind. It contains a wealth of practical information covering all aspects from genetics to breeding, growth, nutrition, housing, management and welfare, and carcass and meat quality.

Neville Beynon is well qualified to write such a book since he has worked all his life with pigs, starting on the family farm in Wales and then with major companies, followed by periods in academia at Sharsholt and Berkshire Colleges of Agriculture, the latter as Head of Agriculture. Over the last twenty years he has developed his own consultancy business, N. & R. Services, advising on the management and production of pigs in the UK and abroad.

The broad spectrum of information contained within the pages of this guide provides all the basic facts relevant to the many factors influencing pig production. This will allow practical strategies to be developed to improve pig production in order to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding human population. This book should be on the bookshelf of all those interested in knowing more about pigs.

Dr William H. Close

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to all those colleagues who have provided advice and guidance to me over the years on farms, AI centres, classrooms and lecturing venues, and on numerous committees and working groups. In particular I would like to thank all those highly professional and amateur pig keepers, veterinarians, nutritionists and other specialists who have been inspirational and a source of so much knowledge and experience.

Special thanks must go to the following: Andrew Smith and his team for allowing me the privilege of taking colour photographs of sows farrowing and piglet behaviour; Lutz Steuer of Atlantic Systems and Knut Noetzel for their generous contribution of photographs; Bob Gornall of Rotech and Professor Johannes Kauffold, University of Leipzig for their contributions concerning AI and ultrasonography; Anthony Mosely and Rattlerow Farms for the professional photographs of pig breeds and hybrids; Stephen Howarth of BPEX for the tabular and graphical data; and companies such as Veyx-Pharma and BOCM PAULS, Midland Pigs and Finrone Systems Ltd, and the Danish Agricultural Council for allowing the use of photographs and data.

My apologies to all those not mentioned or given due credit, who allowed us to take photographs or provided other material included in this book.

I would also like to thank all those who have actively supported and advised me at various stages of my career: my late father Vincent Beynon; influential veterinarians John Gray, Ted Nelson and the late Dr Steven Kerekgyarto; and academic and commercial colleagues, including the late Nick Bird of Farmex, college farm staff, commercial pig keepers, smallholders – and of course the students, a number of whom have now progressed to highly respected senior positions within the pig industry.

Finally, the most recent chapter in my career as a freelance consultant would not have been possible without the encouragement and active support of Dr William Close, including the updating of this book.

1

The Pig and its Development

Pigs have been a feature of farms in Britain since the early Neolithic period. It is highly likely that the wild pigs of Europe and their partially domesticated cousins followed our Neolithic forefathers into the first farming villages. The pigs’ scavenging and rooting behaviour was both a help and a hindrance to these early people, and they demanded control and management. Economic pressures and developments have influenced the way in which pigs have been managed ever since these early times.

The modern domestic pig (Sus domesticus) and its proud and potentially ferocious cousin, the wild boar (Sus scrofa), both belong to the pig family (Suidae). This curious and yet fascinating mammal developed over the past 50 million years from the same type of usually even-toed animal of the order Artiodactyla. It is now known that the pig group (Suina) sub-order had already split from the camel and ruminant sub-orders by about 46 million years ago.

It is a curiosity of evolution that the pig family maintained or developed a less complex digestive system, rather similar to our own in outline, with the ability to eat food based on both plants and animals. The recent reading of the pig’s genome (genetic code) confirms that the pig has retained genes influencing this ability, and that these genes are similar to those found in our own human genome. The wild boar is frequently described as the ‘savage forest omnivore’: it is known to eat carrion, and to catch and eat rabbits and other rodents, snakes and insects, as well as using its highly developed sense of smell to locate roots and other easily digestible vegetable matter, including nuts, seeds and truffles. It is now known that pigs are genetically programmed to have a sense of smell superior to most other animals, and that these genes are continuing to change and evolve.

It is also known that they have significantly fewer bitter taste receptor genes than humans, as well as those that produce a different perception of what is sweet or ‘meaty’ – although piglets certainly appear to have a sweet tooth. Unfortunately they also have a high tolerance for things containing a lot of salt, and this can be extremely dangerous. Nevertheless, this has led to an ability to consume a range of food sources well beyond the taste range of the human omnivore, and the pig has made good use of this, despite an inability to utilize high-fibre diets as efficiently as ruminants.

Man, the hunter gatherer, must have eaten various forms of wild pig from earliest times. Cave paintings and the discovery of pig bones testify to this. The exact timing and method of the pig’s domestication is becoming easier to explain now that we have been able to read the pig’s genetic code. Supporting archaeological evidence indicates that domestication may have actually preceded crop growing.

There is also very strong evidence that domestication occurred in places such as China and Europe independently and at about the same time. Until now, there was a considerable problem in obtaining knowledge of the true descent of the domestic pig, let alone the origin of the numerous breeds that have evolved as recently as the past few centuries. The highly adaptable pig probably saw its chance some eight to twelve thousand years ago, and it is now evident that this may have been sometime before our Neolithic ancestors began to farm crops. The arrival of the village settlements in a forest clearing probably provided the ideal conditions for pigs, with their omnivorous eating habits. Acting the role of scavenger, the pig became the refuse collector of old. Some researchers believe the pioneering pig also played a significant role in clearing the forests and preparing them for pasture suitable for farming sheep and other grazing animals.

European wild boar, Sus scrofa – telephoto of a shy lone male in a central European forest in 2013.

Domestication may have evolved over four stages. First contact might have been brought about by the pigs’ inquisitive scavenging habits and by living close to humans in early settlements. The twenty-first-century citizens of Berlin, Germany, can testify to this, with around 8,000 wild boar living within the city limits in small woodland pockets. They would certainly have found it advantageous to live close to man’s new-found village-based food-production industry we now call farming. The second stage may have involved some containment and control of the troublesome pig in order for it to provide useful products. The third stage might have involved the beginnings of husbandry and selection for valued characteristics – for example, wild stock may have been used to breed for size or some other economically important characteristic. By the fourth stage, the wild pig would no longer have contributed to the types that developed into the European and Asian domesticated pigs (Sus scrofa palustris and Sus vittatus), although it is now known that their genes have had a significant role to play in modern pig breeds. Pigs the exploiters had become the exploited.

It is probable that the Chinese were the earliest pig farmers in the modern sense. Excavations at Zengpiyan, Guilin and Guangxi Zhuang confirmed that pig farming existed there 10,000 years ago. They have had a major influence on the development of pig breeds worldwide, and their breeds, based on the Asian wild pig (Sus orisatus) and the sunda pig (Sus vittatus), have developed in a unique and diverse style, with some fascinating physical characteristics. The Pig Genome project has also shown that the European wild pig and the Asian wild pig developed separately for about a million years and almost became distinct species. This has all probably added to the tremendous diversity found in the pig’s genetic make-up, and in turn the significant variation we find in the 250 or so pig breeds found worldwide.

Pig meat was, and continues to be, the most versatile of meats. As with his cousin the wild boar, the meat, fat, hair, hide, teeth and bones of the domesticated pig provided these early farmers with food, clothing, furniture, decoration, and fat for candles and lamps. Various offals may also have been used for primitive medicines. Insulin (now also synthetically produced), skin graft material and heart valves are just a few modern examples. Archaeologists have linked the presence of large collections of pig bones at Neolithic burial mounds in the UK and Europe (barrows and longmounds) with feasting and high social status settlements. There is little doubt that the pig played a significant and perhaps formerly underestimated part in the social foundations of prehistoric Britain. The pig became important in Britain during the Saxon-Norman period, when poor peasant villages clubbed together to pay for a swineherd. The social status of the swineherd in charge of the domestic pig was never high, and yet, paradoxically, the wild boar was, and is, respected in Europe as the ultimate hunt for the aristocracy.

The pig reached its peak around the Norman Conquest, and then declined due to the restriction on pannage, gradual loss of forests and the rise in importance of sheep. This led to changes in pig husbandry and urged the development of alternatives to grazing acorns and beech mast to systems based on cereals and pulses (peas and beans being fed). These were, and continue to be, expensive commodities, and an imbalance in supply and demand, often caused by harvest failures, meant that pigs were often uneconomical. They began to be housed for longer periods, often on a one per household basis, being fed predominantly on kitchen waste, and this is probably when improvement in pig type began to take place. The traditional swineherd’s medieval pig was a lanky, coarse, long-legged and hairy animal, and had features in common with his cousin the wild boar, from whom he was certainly derived. The housed pig was smaller and fatter, similar to the Chinese types.

This suggests that two distinct types of pig existed for many centuries in varying numbers, side by side, and that they were kept in different husbandry systems. There were, of course, considerable regional variations, and the maintenance of pannage rights in areas such as the New Forest helped perpetuate a strain of pig that had the constitution to forage for mast in the forest. In other areas, brewery or dairy by-products led to intensive pig production. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries industrial food manufacturers were buying young store pigs in their thousands and droving them to London to fatten them on starch by-products. Thriving droving industries developed; for example, Welsh drovers linked with the dairy regions of Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Cheshire, and some of these pigs were grown on to produce ‘Wiltshire Cure’ bacon, considered the best in the country. The economic survival of the Welsh store pig producer therefore depended on the drover, and this interdependence of the weaner producer and his customer, the grower and finisher of slaughter pigs, with the location of slaughter outlets, continues to influence the structure of the pig industry to this day.

The world’s heaviest pig at 1,222kg in 1986, in Taiwan. PIG INTERNATIONAL

The seventeenth century saw the introduction and influence of Chinese and Neapolitan pigs. These were smaller and matured earlier than the Old English types, and the breeding fashion during the midnineteenth century led to the extinction of many of the larger breeds in favour of these early maturing types. The old large breeds had been recorded as growing to a massive three-quarters of a ton at two years of age, and had apparently been used exclusively for bacon production.

There were many theories about the true descent of most modern breeds. Until the recent reading of the pig genome there was very little evidence to support them. It is, however, possible to trace the emergence of the Yorkshire breed, which probably, by varying degrees of Chinese influence, developed into the Large White Yorkshire and Small White Yorkshire breeds; these were crossed in turn, and produced the Middle White breed. Certainly at the Royal Show in Birmingham in 1876 there were three distinct categories of the Yorkshire breed of White pig. We can probably thank the apparent love of Yorkshire folk for a monster pig such as the Old Yorkshire, whose genes were maintained in good measure in the Large White breed. That said, the pig genome project confirms that of the twenty-one thousand pig genes that encode protein growth and development, more than a third of them in all UK pig breeds have come from the Asian pigs that were first brought in less than 200 years ago.

As a pure breed, the Large White is probably the most important in the world (especially when the related USA Yorkshire breed is included), though we cannot thank the British farmer for this. The pioneer breeder of Yorkshires, and more specifically the Large White, was a weaver from Keighley, named Joseph Tuley. Apparently such smallscale pig keepers had an enthusiasm for improving pigs matched only by their love of pigeons and greyhound dogs. According to the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of 1881, by 1850 they had produced a far more refined animal than the coarse mammoth formerly seen in our show yards and now found upon some northern farms.

Unfortunately for many of the larger breeds, the show ring was working against them. The farmer breeders’ obsession with fat production, and the smaller cuts demanded by the increasingly affluent consumers, led to a period in British pig breeding which, in retrospect, was clearly based on the wrong priorities and lost opportunities (Julian Wiseman, see Further Reading). The London trade demanded a small pork pig of 40 to 70lb (31kg) carcase weight, with no more than 1¼ in (32mm) of fat, whereas the industrial regions, and particularly Birmingham, demanded larger pigs of up to 350lb (155kg); it is interesting to note that the Midlands slaughter weight remained significantly heavier until relatively recently. Apparently, those involved in manual labour and those whose work demanded the consumption of a cold meal preferred larger cuts of meat from heavier pigs. The cottager’s pig was often slaughtered at these heavy weights.

Also the development of bacon curing, based on very highly salted meat, was no longer confined to the cold months of the year, and should have inspired the breeders to produce larger, leaner pigs. This was because George Harris of Calne, in Wiltshire, had discovered an American curing process that could be carried out throughout the summer using an ice-cooled house. In 1864, together with his brother Thomas, he patented and perfected a mild cure (Wiltshire Cure) which did not require a large fat covering to take up the salt essential in hard-salt (dry) cure.

Wiltshire sides of bacon cured on the farm in an outhouse.

But the breeders, for some reason, probably associated with the ‘fancy’ of the show ring, applied the wrong priorities, and lost opportunities that were staring them in the face. Neither pork nor bacon production required fat pigs, yet the breeders continued to consider a good ‘breeding pig’ to be essentially fat. Charles Spencer stated c. 1880 that the sheep judges had the additional responsibility of judging pigs, and ‘they generally put the Middle Whites first because their nice square backs used to appeal to the sheep connoisseur’. It is little wonder that the British pig industry receded whilst the foreign competitors, the USA and Denmark, took over their market. In the event, small fat breeds such as the Small White were to suffer extinction before World War I was over. The Berkshire breed managed to make some rapid improvement and survives to this day, although, along with the Middle White, it is a threatened, rare breed.

In 1884, the National Pig Breeders’ Association (NPBA – now the BPA and NPA) was founded, based on three British breeds of pedigree pig: the Large White, the Middle White and the Tamworth. The Association’s chief aim in those days was to set standards for breeders and to assist in the improvement of UK swine. It is interesting to note that by the time the first herd book was published on 1 May 1885, the pedigree registers included Berkshires, Blacks and Small Whites. Not all breeds had developed societies at this time, and even when formed, they often worked separately, a situation that has persisted until relatively recently.

The NPBA was very much involved in the importation of the Landrace in 1949 and the early 1950s. Curiously, this breed came from Sweden, not Denmark. The Danes had sold Landrace pigs to Canada, and because these had failed to perform well, the British Government looked to Sweden, where the Landrace was also well developed. Once again it is a peculiarity that the Landrace breeders ran their own herd book right up to 1978 when the Landrace Breed Society finally merged with the NPBA.

The small White c. 1910.

Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs, now often sold as pet ‘micro-pigs’. MATTHEW CURRAN

Chinese Fengiing pig with thirty-nine piglets. This breed belongs to the same Taihu breed group as the Meishan pig. FAO

In the 1950s the NPBA was instrumental in the setting up of pig testing stations designed to provide UK breeders with their first scientific breeding scheme. This led to the setting up of the Pig Industry Development Authority (PIDA), which in turn became the basis for the Meat and Livestock Commission (MLC). The MLC still operates services for the meat sector, but the British Pig Executive (BPEX) now continues to provide excellent advisory and consultancy services to the pig industry.

From 1982 the NPBA also evolved into a trade organization representing commercial producers’ interests and forming an effective pressure group. It was renamed the BPA in 1991. The roles were split in 1998 when the NFU Pigs Committee also joined and merged to form the National Pig Association (NPA). The NPA took on its role as the sole trade industry body, and the British Pig Association retained its role representing British pig breeders at home and abroad, maintaining the pedigree herd books and having a central role in helping to prevent breeds becoming extinct. This is an essential task, supported by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, because many of our native traditional breeds have fewer than 500 sows left in the UK.

In 2013 the British Pig Association represents fourteen breeds: the Berkshire, British Saddleback, Duroc, Gloucester Old Spot, Hampshire, British Landrace, Large Black, Large White, Mangalitza, Middle White, Oxford Sandy and Black, Pietrain, Tamworth and Welsh.

PIG NUMBERS

World pork production was predicted by the FAO to reach a record of 112 million metric tons in 2012. In 2011 it was estimated that China alone produced about 50 million tons of pig meat and had a pig population of more than 466 million. The next largest was the USA with more than 10 million tons from a total population of 60 million pigs. Asia Pacific accounted for 57 per cent of all pig meat output in 2011. The world total census of pigs is probably about one billion, and close to half of these are found in China. The figures show that China has some way to go to catch up the USA and other nations on productivity, but they are doing so, and this will result in more pig meat produced more efficiently and economically from the same number of breeding pigs. It is interesting to note that although the number of sows in the USA was 20 per cent smaller than in 1991, the pig meat output in 2012 was expected to be 35 per cent more than in 1991. This has resulted in pig meat being produced at a lower cost relative to earlier times, coupled with rapid increases in consumption in developing economies. There is, and always has been, a strong positive link between world economic and population growth and that of pig meat consumption.

Over the 130-year period from the mid-1880s there has been a marked increase in pig production with big variations in developments between countries. The British count has gone from 2.62 million then to about 4.5 million today, although in 1883 James Long suggested that there were probably another million pigs at that time, kept by cottagers and town labourers, for which there was no count. The cottager’s pig was a common feature well into the 1950s, when it finally disappeared – the important role it played in the household economy and nutrition of the working classes in both town and country had all but gone by the middle of the twentieth century.

The maximum number of pigs in the UK peaked in about 1998 at around 8.1 million, and the recent decline illustrates the rapid change in the sow herd that occurred by the middle of the last decade due to severe economic pressure, largely the result of two notifiable disease episodes in 2000 and 2001 (swine fever and foot and mouth), exacerbated by expensive unilateral new sow housing welfare regulations for the UK breeding herd in 1999. The UK sow stall ban was strictly implemented, whilst their EU counterparts were able to continue with lower cost confinement systems until 2013, when a partial ban (after the first four weeks of gestation) was meant to be enforced across all EU states. The survival of any pig industry will ultimately depend on economics, and in particular currency exchange rates, and this will often relate back directly to political decision making that affects trade, the competitiveness of the home industry, and maintaining good biosecurity against imported diseases.

The Danish ‘Danbred’ sow is currently one of the most successful ‘hyper-prolific’ dam-line hybrid sows, with top performing herds successfully rearing approaching thirty-five piglets reared and weaned to four weeks of age per sow per annum. Highly productive and costefficient pig production in other countries will pose an ongoing threat and challenge to the UK pig producer. DANISH AGRICULTURAL COUNCIL

Wars have devastating effects on society and all industries. The pig can be seen to compete with the human population for food when there is a scarcity, such as that created during a world war: thus in 1914 there were 2.5 million pigs, while in 1918 there were 1.75 million; similarly in 1938 there were 3.5 million pigs and in 1945 there were 1.5 million. Immediately after World War II it was clear that untold damage had been done to UK pig meat quality. During that period of food rationing and up until 1953 when the government decontrolled the pig meat market, the War Agricultural Executive had operated a flat rate price policy with no regard for quality. Cheap bulky feeds including boiled potatoes and swill (kitchen and canteen waste) had been used, with little or no regard for balanced pig diets.

Attempts were made in the 1930s to operate national pig-buying contracts for bacon manufacture, though these had already failed before the outbreak of war due to a lack of market discipline. Suggestions that Britain should set up pig-breeding testing stations were made in the 1920s, but these were to take another thirty years to materialize. The Danes had already been breeding pigs scientifically for seventy years when the first British pig progeny testing station finally opened in 1958. However, British researchers led the world, and the work of Sir John Hammond provided the basis for understanding growth and development in pigs. This laid the foundations for much of the highly successful and profitable work that came to fruition in the 1950s and 1960s, and which has been successfully carried forward into the future.

In 1953 free market forces began to function once again, and soon over-production of low quality pigs depressed the market, resulting in a steady reduction in the number of pig herds due to a lack of profitability. However, successful herds began to increase in size with the application of up-to-date breeding and production methods, and the importation of the Swedish Landrace in 1949 and 1953 made a dramatic impact on all UK breeds. The Welsh breed opened up its herd book for a period in the mid-1950s and allowed the use of pure Landrace blood. The photograph of our Champion Welsh boar and Reserve Supreme Champion at the 1951 Royal Welsh Show was typical of the shape and conformation of the old Welsh breed, but the Landrace infusion changed the pig dramatically, and by the late 1950s it was very different, retaining the sound constitution and hardiness of the old Welsh breed, but combining these qualities with the improved carcase quality and production efficiency of the scientifically bred Landrace. It is interesting to note that recent discoveries within the pig genome have shown that the genes that produced an increase in the number of vertebrae and extra ribs in these longer pigs originally came from the European wild boar (Sus scrofa).

The old Welsh type before the Landrace influence; exhibited by D. V. Beynon at the Royal Welsh Show in 1951.

The modern Welsh breed.

The hybrid pig-breeding industry came into existence in the late 1950s when a number of today’s highly successful and now frequently multi-national breeding companies were formed. The Wall’s Meat Company (Unilever) developed its hybrid pig scheme in 1958, followed closely by a group of farmers in the Thames Valley who set up the now multinational Pig Improvement Company (PIC). British pig-breeding companies have made, and continue to make, significant contributions to pig breeding and its associated technology across the world. During the mid-1970s there were twenty-eight UK-based breeding companies listed through the NPBA and carrying out pig-testing programmes. Independent pedigree breeders took part in the early PIDA (Pig Industry Development Authority – seeabove) breeding schemes, which were maintained until relatively recently by the Meat and Livestock Commission.

During these early years Dr Melrose of the MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) breeding centre at Shinfield developed commercially viable artificial insemination techniques, including the now internationally used Melrose reusable rubber spiral pig insemination catheter, which is also available in a disposable model. Despite an early start (1955) with a considerable boost in the mid-1960s when Wall’s and MLC began to develop their commercial pig artificial insemination schemes, the number of pig inseminations in the UK only really began to expand significantly during the late 1980s when the other large breeding companies began to encourage its use. Pig AI is now used widely and good results are consistently achieved on commercial farms, with world class support from the breeding companies and organizations such as BPEX (British Pig Executive – seeabove).

TYPES OF MODERN PIG PRODUCER

There are a number of different types of pig farming business, and these are typical for UK situations, as described below.

The weaner producer: Breeds and sells weaner or store pigs from an indoor or outdoor unit. For example, in 2013 approaching 40 per cent of UK sows are kept on outdoor breeding units, and piglets weaned at the end of their fourth week are often sold directly from the field to specialist weaner-rearer and finishing units. (In 2012 fewer than 3 per cent of pigs were reared to slaughter weight outdoors.)

Breeder, weaner – grower – finishing herds: These producers either operate on one site, or have the breeding herd housed at a different location to the weaner rearing herd. It is not uncommon for the finishing herd to be on a third site within the same farming business – a so-called ‘split-site’ arrangement. This breeding herd can be based outdoors, as well as the weaner rearing stage. However, finishing pigs to slaughter weight outdoors is not common because they require excessive amounts of feed and demand a much higher premium price at slaughter.

Finishing herds: These producers buy in weaner pigs (at 7kg plus) or the heavier ‘grower’ pigs (at 35kg) and rear them to sell at commercial slaughter weights – now normally around 105kg live weight and increasing, with typical average carcase weights at around 80kg.

The pedigree producer: Breeds and sells breeding pigs, maintains rare breeds and pedigree lines (male and female); such concerns are often sensibly combined with either selling the meat products directly to the consumer, or supplying the local farmers’ markets or farm shops.

Breeding stock multiplication units: The production of breeding stock on contract to, or run by, commercial breeding companies – known as multiplication herds. This usually involves producing breeding gilts from so-called ‘grandparent stock’ (GP and GGP) using semen and/or breeding stock supplied from the breeding company’s nucleus herds.

The breeding company: These companies usually operate throughout the world with specialist pig units involved within a so-called highly integrated pig-breeding pyramid. They also offer AI direct to the commercial pig keeper, along with serving their own multiplication and nucleus herds. They provide hybrid breeding gilts from specialist dam lines bred for outdoor and indoor herds, specialist market outlets and hyper-prolific breeding lines, along with a range of matching ‘meat line’ boars (usually hybrids) for natural service or AI.

The size of the UK pig herd, prepared and commented on by BPEX (AHDB) 2012. Source: Agricultural census data taken from ‘A hundred years of British Food & Farming’ until 1983, and the devolved UK national agriculture departments from 1984 onwards.

Pig numbers in the UK peaked during the last third of the twentieth century, but since the millennium there has been a steady fall for the reasons listed earlier. The current numbers are half of what they were and almost the lowest in living memory. This clearly illustrates the tough economic and political reality facing the modern pig producer, just as it has done throughout history.

2

The Market and its Influence on Breeds and Systems

The days when it was considered unsafe to eat pork if there was not an ‘r’ in the month are long gone now that we have the universal distribution of the domestic refrigerator. Pig meat is the most versatile of all meats, marketed as fresh pork, bacon, ham and other added value products such as pâté, sausages and pies. In Britain, however, the level of self-sufficiency in these products has fallen with the decline in the pig breeding herd.

About one-third of the total 27kg of pig meat consumed per annum by the average Briton is eaten as bacon, one quarter fresh pork and approaching half as processed pig meat. Pig meat consumption in Britain rose by around 17 per cent during the 1980s, whilst bacon had to fight to maintain its place. In fact bacon consumption declined rapidly following Britain’s entry into the European Community in 1972, prior to which bacon consumption was around 11.5kg per person, per year, as compared to 8kg in the late 1980s. The annual per capita consumption levels for pig meat in the EU in 2012 are shown in the accompanying diagram.

The following table provides an overview of pig meat consumption in the UK in 2011. There has been a significant increase in processed pig meat products sold over the past twenty-five years.

The UK has a below average consumption of pig meat, but has an above EU average consumption for all meats. We consume close to 30kg of poultry meat, 25kg pig meat, 22kg beef and about 6kg of lamb per person per year. It is interesting to note that in 2011, 82 per cent of bacon and pork sales were made through the large UK supermarkets. The total amount of pig meat consumed in the UK remains close to an impressive 1.25 million tons per annum.

Per capita pig meat consumption in selected EU Member States, 2012.

UK Pig Meat Consumption as Bacon, Pork and Processed Products

QUALITY IN PIG MEAT PRODUCTION

Modern consumers demand lean meat with little visible fat; they care about its appearance and texture, and demand it in a form that is easy to cook and to serve cold, and is good to eat. There has been a dramatic reduction in the fat content of pig carcases over the past half century, and the average British pork pig is now leaner than many broiler chickens. Pork, like chicken, is also lower in the saturated fats associated with high cholesterol than other so-called red meats and dairy products.

The tremendous reduction in pig carcase fat content has been achieved by a combination of genetic selection, nutritional manipulation and fine tuning by the producer, encouraged by the strict carcase classification pig payment schemes. Carcase classification is based on measuring fat depth and lean meat content. On 1 January 1989 the EEC introduced a new Pig Carcase Classification Scheme for all abattoirs slaughtering more than two hundred pigs. This reports an estimated lean meat content based on a six-point scale – SEUROP – where ‘S’ is the best and ‘P’ the worst.

Abattoirs in Britain use various devices to take these measurements, including the long-established optical probe, which is operated by reading the fat depth at precise and defined positions over the eye muscle at the head of the last rib. The diagram defines the positions, and the photographs illustrate the method employed. The optical viewfinder blade is inserted into the carcase at probe position (P1 and P3 or P2 only). The fat depth is measured with the barrel adjusted with the viewfinder sight glass centre wire sight directly on the lean and fat line. The fat depth is then read off the measuring barrel.

Standard optical probe for P2 and P1 + P3 measurement.

MLC operator and electronic probe.

Location of probing sites on a pig carcase.

A number of abattoirs have invested in automatic probes that calculate lean meat content. These probes are also used to measure fat depth over the eye muscle, but because of slightly different designs in the probe shafts (blades), the positions may differ and include more readings. The most advanced versions involve sophisticated scanning and computer technology.

Consumers are becoming increasingly concerned with the possible presence of residues in meat and the traceability of the product through from farm to table. Hormones were banned in pig meat production in the late 1970s, long before the ban in other meats, and there are no anabolic steroids implicated in pig meat production in the EU. Food scares and corrupt practices have increased the consumers’ wish to buy locally produced foods.

Location of probe measuring windows and probe insertion points.