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n.c.iowa | The hog guys went through this in the late 70’s-90’s especially when the packers started paying on back fat and loin eye size, that really started the drive towards terminal tendencies. Those ol’ girls that used to be around for 7-12 parities, all of a sudden couldn’t get three or four parities out of a good percentage of the herd.
Then about 10-15 years ago, the integrators learned a different lesson, though in the same context, beings the hog supply chain was broke into it’s separate components, each doing their own little thing often times without regard to the whole. in most instances the farrowing house managers were calling the shots on the direction the breeding was going, after the sins of the 80’s led to some pretty sad sow longevity in the 90’s, the balance swung the other way and maternal tendencies came to the forefront, which was leading to some great farrowing house numbers, but some real crappy performance in the finisher.
And every company had this to varying degrees.
The one thing I see in the cattle world is the great genetic diversity that they have to work with, the pig guys have a extremely narrow genetic base to work with, that kinda concerns me. | |
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Are Angus the new terminal breed?
