UK: pig & poultry fair – £100,000 investment

“Since the last Pig Fair, two years ago, the on-farm value of our genetic improvements has amounted to £6.17 per pig, or about 8p per kg, based on an average deadweight figure of 80 kg,” said Ed Sutcliffe, the company’s technical director.©This value comes from a combination of factors including improved numbers born alive, growth rate and feed conversion efficiency.©It would be worth £148.08 per sow for producers selling 24 pigs per sow annually or over £74,000 for a 500-sow herd performing at this level.

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The value in numbers born alive alone amounted to £19.73, while quicker growth rate — which enabled pigs to be taken to a high weight in the same period of time — was worth £2.18 per pig.©The improvement in feed conversion efficiency was worth £2.35 over the last two years.

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Far from reaching a genetic plateau, improvements in these vitally-important economic traits, will be maintained, says Ed Sutcliffe, the company’s technical director.

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To help sustain this rate of improvement, ACMC is investing over £100,000 in increasing from 40 to 50 the number of sophisticated FIRE (Feed Intake Recording Equipment) stations for individual performance testing breeding animals at nucleus level.

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Unlike many other companies, ACMC tests both boars and dam-lines and the new equipment will allow up to 6,000 animals to be individually tested annually — around 4,000 boars and 1,800 gilts.

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BPEX is mounting a campaign to encourage British pig producers to improve productivity to achieve an output of two tonnes of pigmeat per sow a year.©The genetic improvement seen by ACMC is the equivalent of £151.52 for each sow showing this level of productivity.©BPEX figures show GB average output is 1,608 kg per sow per year compared with an EU average of 2000kg.

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