Culling in livestock production is replete with indecision, reluctance and emotions for many producers. They’ve often worked hard for months or years to optimize their animals’ health only to be faced with removing an animal from the herd to realize increased economic benefits. Statistics require perspective from all sides, as well as accurate data collection. Dennis Dipetre and Lance Mulberry challenge the average parity metric in this article.
. . . individual sow performance is often impossible to calculate.”
Source: PORK, August 21, 2023. Link. In the sow herd, what is going on beneath the average is critical to optimizing performance and getting the voluntary culling decision right.
INSIGHTS: The tendencies to set it and forget it offers veterinary teams opportunities to help producers improve production outcomes at all levels. The comments about methodologies and data collection weaknesses were surprising given the swine industry’s propensity to project they measure everything.