The modern, highly prolific sow is a marvel of genetic potential, but she is running a high-stakes marathon. With industry-wide sow mortality hovering near 15%—nearly double what it was a decade ago—the breeding herd is under unprecedented pressure.
To relieve that pressure and protect profit margins, producers must rethink how they select, develop and retain their females.
“The sow is absolutely the foundation of everything that we do,” says Dr. Cara Haden, director of animal welfare and biosecurity with Pipestone, speaking during the recent State of the Pork Industry Report. “If we start from a healthy foundation, raising pigs is not only fun, but incredibly productive.”
Guard the Herd’s Foundation
From conformation to milking abilities, the gilts selected today dictate where an entire operation goes tomorrow. Haden points out that health issues in the sow barn inevitably cascade down the supply chain.
“If you have a sow that’s shedding Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae to her piglets, that is going to impact their growth all the way until they are marketed,” Haden explains. “You have to start with a healthy sow.”
This is particularly true for viral challenges.
“We have all these discussions about how to improve pre-weaning mortality, and the sow is a massive component of that,” she says. “A PRRS-positive sow produces a PRRS-positive piglet, which leads to a PRRS-positive weaned pig. And those are incredibly hard to keep alive.”
Tracking the “Who, When and Why”
Improving sow longevity requires a deep dive into farm data. Brad Eckberg, account executive for North America Swine with MTech Systems, urges producers to closely monitor three defining metrics to evaluate their gilt replacement programs:
1. Replacement Rate
The replacement rate is the percentage of the herd replaced by new gilts annually. While the U.S. industry average often hovers between 50% and 60%, a target of 40% to 50% is optimal for maintaining a healthy parity distribution and controlling development costs.
“Keep in mind the financial break-even for bringing a gilt in is her third parity (P3),” Eckberg says. “You need at least three farrowing events just to break even on that animal. As you look at your replacement rate, you have to be highly strategic about which animals you are removing.”
2. P1-P3 Retention Rate
This metric measures the percentage of first-parity (P1) gilts that successfully farrow, recover, breed back, and survive to farrow their third litter. It is a direct indicator of early-career longevity and structural soundness.
“These early-parity females are the ones you haven’t broken even on yet,” Eckberg notes. “They are also typically highly productive. If you have a high P1 through P3 removal rate, you are forced to keep older, less productive animals in the barn just to hit your breed targets.”
Eckberg notes that while early culling has many drivers, the most common failures occur right after the first lactation. “First-parity females often struggle with breed-back. If they experience a challenging post-weaning estrus or fail to conceive, they leave the herd far too early.”
3. Sow Mortality
Sow mortality includes breeding females that die naturally or are humanely euthanized on-farm. Ten years ago, the U.S. pork industry averaged a manageable 8% to 9%. Today, that number sits closer to 15%.
To turn the tide, Eckberg says producers must actively investigate the data behind the losses by asking:
- What parity was the sow?
- What was her health and treatment history?
- What genetic line did she belong to?
- When did she die?
“For a lot of systems, high death loss is concentrated right around the farrowing event,” Eckberg adds. “Was it due to prolapse? Dystocia? Heat stress? Identifying the ‘when’ and the ‘why’ tells you exactly where to focus your barn resources.”
“Will This Gilt Make a Fifth-Parity Sow?”
Protecting those vulnerable early-parity females requires a mental shift at selection. For Adam Annegers, sow production manager at JBS, the solution is a simple but rigorous question.
“The most important thing we can do is select the proper gilt,” Annegers says. “When we’re looking at replacement candidates, we need to ask ourselves: Will this gilt make a fifth-parity sow? If the answer is no, she should not be selected.”
While producers cannot control market volatility or weather, gilt selection is entirely within their power.
“We get to choose who we breed,” Annegers emphasizes. “Once she is selected, our primary job is maintaining her body condition. If she’s too heavy, her performance drops; if she’s too thin, she won’t stay in the herd. Keeping her healthy and in correct body condition from day one is the ultimate recipe for long-term success.”
The Downstream Payoff
When sow farms successfully manage longevity, health and selection, the benefits immediately register in the grow-finish barns.
Randy Kuker, director of livestock operations for The Equity, says start-weight and pig quality are the ultimate indicators of a healthy sow herd.
“In the wean-to-finish barn, we love starting a bigger, more consistent pig,” Kuker says. “For us, the sweet spot is a 20- to 23-day-old weaned pig. The viability is simply much higher.”
Even with a strong start, Kuker notes that the transition requires careful management and tight execution of health protocols.
“We still aggressively sort our bottom 15% into small pens and gruel-feed them with a high-quality baby pig restart to get them going,” Kuker says. “But starting with a larger, more consistent group from the sow farm makes our job significantly easier.”
Kuker also advises close communication between the sow farm and finishing crew regarding disease pressure, such as Streptococcus suis.
“If you are seeing Strep pop up, ensure your vaccine protocols are up to date, keep the communication lines open, and make sure your barn teams have water medications on-site and ready to deploy immediately. Being even a day late can cost you pigs.”
