Reproductive Performance of Purebred and Crossbred Landrace and Large White Sows Raised under Thai Commercial Swine Herd

Abstract

The reproductive data of a total of 27,783 sows from Landrace (L) of 2,016 heads (7,080 records), Large White (W) of 1,573 heads (6,016 records), and the crossbred sows between L x W of 1,581 heads (6,273 records) and W x L of 2,146 heads (8,414 records) were studied to investigate the influence of breed on reproductive performance of sows, including total piglets born (TPB), number of piglets born alive (NBA), stillbirth piglets (STB), mummified piglets (MUM), average birth weight (ABW) and average weaning weight (AWW). Breed, parity and year × season at farrowing were considered as fixed effects in a statistical model. Least Squares Means (LSM) for each subclass of breed were estimated and the different values of LSM were compared using the t-test method. The results found that breed, parity and year × season at farrowing significantly affected reproductive performance of sows in all studied traits (P < 0.01). The crossbred sows (L x W and W x L) had higher LSM for TPB, NBA, ABW and AWW than purebred sows (L and W) and had less STB than purebred sows (P < 0.05). For MUM, a small but significant difference was found in each breed (0.23 ± 0.01 to 0.32 ± 0.01 heads). The crossbred W x L had the highest LSM for TPB, NBA and AWW which implied that crossbred sow production using Landrace sows as dam line tends to have more piglets per litter and have higher weaning weight than Large White.