All over the world the pig producers always want to use the best genetics in their farms, which would help them to be more competitive and profitable. It makes perfect sense, since the piglets should perform increasingly better in terms of feed efficiency, growth rate, lean meat, quality meat, and even diseases resistance. We have seen the genetic companies around the world spending thousands upon thousands of dollars researching to find the best animal. They are already looking for the animal to produce pork meat in the 2030’s. These companies have invested in modern and innovative tools, such genetic engineering, genetic marker, big data, etc and etc.
However, unfortunately we haven´t seen the same concern from the swine producers about reproduction techniques and technologies. Sometimes we don´t get understanding the paradox, if we want the animal with the best genetic, we should also want the reproductive technology that helps me to get all the genetic efficiency and benefit. We mean, for one pig be able to express its full genetic potential, first it must be born. And for a piglet to be born, one sow must be inseminated, become pregnant and farrow. Searching for the best / best genetics and not worrying about reproductive technologies does not make sense. As the saying goes: “who was born first, the chicken or the egg?”
In our opinion, the pig producer should adopt breeding tools to help him get more piglets from boars with higher genetic value. Many procedures and techniques can be handled on the boar studs and sow farms. Techniques like post-cervical artificial insemination – PCAI, making use of single sires semen doses and others techniques. These types of technologies are thought to maximize the genetic benefits as well. Also simple procedures, such as being more careful with the storage temperature where the semen doses are kept, can help to get better results. Although many, many farms live with poor results in the farrowing rate and total born, which would solve them, just improving the reproduction procedures and taking more care of the of the semen dose quality.
We hope that the pig producer will soon realize the size of the gap in his hands to maximize genetic potential through reproduction. The greatest opportunity is to get more piglets from the best boars or even more piglets per sow per year, from the sows inseminated with the higher genetic value boars. Wouldn’t it be time to try to take advantage of genetic efficiency, starting to look for another way to deal with reproduction?
