The effect of parental genotype and parity number on pigs litter size

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of parental genotype and parity number on the litter size properties of sows (number of live born, stillborn and weaned piglets). The investigation was conducted on a farm in Vojvodina. The analysis included 65535 litters that originated from five genotypes of dams (sows with unknown origin, n = 20980; Yorkshire, n = 3189; Landrace, n = 22426; F1(YxL), n = 14251; F1(LxY), n = 4689) and five genotypes of sires (Yorkshire, n = 21641; Landrace, n = 26623; Pietrain, n = 485; Duroc, n = 13463; Hampshire, n = 3323). Based on the obtained results it can be concluded that the genotypes of the dams had statistically significant (p<0.01) influence on the observed litters properties. Landrace sows achieved the highest average number of born alive piglets (10.12) with a statistically significant difference (p<0.01) compared with sows of other genotypes. The observed effect of sire genotype on litter size properties was statistically significant (p<0.01), where the terminal genotypes were superior when it comes to the number of live born and weaned piglets. Regression analysis of dependence between parity and litter size recorded positive regression coefficients: number of live born (b = 0.007), stillborn (b = 0. 09) and weaned piglets (b = 0.07). Influence of parity on the observed traits of litter size was highly statistically significant (p<0.01).

Keywords

• genotype
• sire
• dam
• liter size
• piglets