Reproduction performance, LWY, Organized farm, Non-genetic factors.

In India, pig farming is highly unorganized because it's not popularised like other livestock and poultry industry. In last five years, pig farming is promoted by all type of peoples to strengthening their family economy because of high profit from pig rearing. Because of the increasing trend in consumption of pork, numbers of small holding pig farmers increasing drastically among especially young graduates. Development of good management practices like scientific rearing, feeding and breeding of pigs attract the farmers in right manner. Reproduction performance of pigs directly play a key role in satisfy the demand of animal protein by producing more piglets (Ramesh et al., 2012) and significant economic importance in the piggery industry as it directly impacts production costs and profits (Devendran et al., 2015). Analysis of farm data possibly will increase the distribution of useful information to maximize the sows reproductive potential, and also improve herd productivity in breeding herds (Koketsu et al., 2017). Hence, analysis of farm data was carried out to find the effect of period, season and parity on the reproduction performance of LWY pig in an organized farm. 

This study was carried out at Pig Breeding Unit, Post Graduate Research Institute in Animal Sciences, Kattupakkam, Chengalapttu, Tamil Nadu. The data pertaining to reproduction performance fulfil the objectives were collected from farm registers for the period of 2015 to 2022. All the pigs were maintained under intensive system of rearing with standard feeding, breeding and other management practices. In this study, age at first farrowing and farrowing intervals were calculated based on the farrowing date of the individual sow. Other traits such as litter size at birth (No’s), litter weight at birth (kg), litter size  at weaning (No’s) and litter weight at weaning (kg) were recorded and analysed. The collected data were classified into four periods and four seasons to study the variation of non-genetics factors.  To study the influence of period of birth, season of birth and parity, least squares analysis (Harvey, 1990) was carried out through SPSS software version 23 for statistical analysis. Further pair-wise comparisons of least squares mean within the factors, Kramer’s (1957) modified Duncan’s Multiple Range Test (DMRT) was performed. 

Among the different exotic pig breeds, Large White Yorkshire (LWY) pig is the most popular one reared all over the world because of its fecundity, faster growth rate, better-feed conversion ratio and well adopt to all environmental conditions. Because of different managemental practices, performance of LWY pigs vary from organised farm to field condition. So study was conducted to know the reproduction performance of LWY pigs under farm condition. The overall calculated average age at first farrowing and farrowing intervals were represented in Table 1 and litter traits like LSB, LWB, LSW and LWW were given under the Table 2.

The overall AFF and FI’s were found to be 464.56 ± 10.09 and 244.03 ± 4.21, respectively. The overall calculated mean age at first farrowing and farrowing intervals in this study was higher in comparison with previous report by Paramasivam et al. (2021); Keyho et al. (2017), respectively. The period of farrowing had highly significant source of variations and season of farrowing had no significant effect on AFF and FI’s. Early age at first farrowing and shortest farrowing interval was noticed during the period of 2015 – 2016 and in the winter and north east monsoon season. Lalrintluanga (2015) reported 188.70 ± 3.99 and 212.90 ± 3.93 days of farrowing intervals in LWY pigs under extensive and organize systems of rearing respectively in Mizoram. 

The period of farrowing had highly significant (p<0.01) effect on all the litter traits except litter weight at birth. The overall no significant difference was noticed in season on litter size at birth and period on litter weight at birth. In the present study, average litter size at birth was lower than the findings of Ramesh et al. (2012); Lalrintluanga (2015). Keyho et al. (2017) ; Li et al. (2017), reported maximum litter size at birth in LWY as 13.17 at Mannuthy, Kerala and 12.52 at South China, respectively.  Litter size at birth in our findings, which was in close agreement with the result of Paramasivam et al. (2021). Lalrintluanga (2015); Paramasivam et al. (2021) reported litter size at weaning as 7.39 ± 0.23 and 7.63 ± 0.50 respectively which was in accordance with our findings. Based on our results, highest litter size at birth and weaning was noticed in South-West monsoon season and fifth parity. Significantly highest litter weight at birth was noticed on third farrowing and winter season and lowest on first farrowing and North-East monsoon season. Litter size and weight of weaning had highly significant with reference to the period and parity in this study. Among other non-genetic factors, significantly first parity was found as lowest value in all the litter traits. 

Table 1:  Least squares mean of age at first farrowing and farrowing intervals in LWY pig.

SE = Standard Errors; N = Number of observations;   **= Highly Significant; NS=Not Significant

Table 2: Least squares mean value of litter traits in LWY pigs under farm condition.

SE = Standard Errors; N = Number of observations; **= Highly Significant; *= Significant; NS=Not Significant

Further research is recommended at different population and breeds to explore the effect of non-genetic factors on performance of pigs. Results of more research on pigs, will help to frame the breeding programme to achieve the improvement on performance of pigs. 

R.S. Kathiravan, A. Karthikeyan, M. Murugan, P. Tensingh Gnanaraj and  D. Balasubramanyam  (2024). Reproductive Performance of Large White Yorkshire Pigs in an Organized Farm. Biological Forum – An International Journal, 16(10): 86-88.