Investigation of Lifetime Performance in Dutch Large White × Dutch Landrace Crossbred Sows

The aim of present study was to show the main production parameters of sows based on 4359 crossbred Dutch Large White and Dutch Landrace pigs. The data were collected from 2004 to 2010 from Hungarian nucleus farms to analyze the lifetime performance of removed sows. The paper has studied the frequency of different culling reasons, the average lifespan of removed sows and the number of piglets born alive according to the parity. The result showed that the most frequent reasons for sow removal were the different fertility problems (29.5%) and productivity problems (26.8%). In additional, it was detectable that the 35% of culling occured after the first farrowing or before this and there were removed 95% of the examined sows after the 8th parity. The highest litter size was observed at the 6th parity when the mean of lifespan of sows was 1210 days.