“Think I’d crumble? You think I’d lay down and die? No, not I. I will survive.”
Gloria Gaynor captured the world with her powerful ballad back in 1978. Her “I Will Survive” lyrics aren’t a far cry from the focus of maternal and terminal genetic products today. There’s no question swine genetics are becoming increasingly complex. Although few traits have decreased in importance in recent years, geneticists pinpoint survival and robustness as key areas of increasing importance.
Survival across all phases of production is growing in importance for maternal and terminal lines, says Jenelle Dunkelberger, global health and behavior platform lead for Topigs Norsvin. This includes survival under conventional health, as well as disease-challenged conditions.
Mortality, both in pigs and in sows, comes to mind immediately for Tom Rathje, chief technical officer at DNA Genetics LLC.
“Mortality is one of the top profit drivers for both maternal and terminal lines,” he says. “The challenge for geneticists is working with these complex and lowly heritable traits to improve the overall robustness and resilience of our animals. There is no easy phenotype for mortality, resilience or ‘robustness,’ but we now have tools to apply that will result in genetic progress in this space.”
In addition to general sow longevity, Dunkelberger sees more emphasis on specific causes of death loss, such as feet/leg quality and vaginal/uterine prolapse.
“Disease is also an ongoing issue due to the emergence of new, virulent porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus strains in the U.S. Survival following disease challenge is expected to remain a top issue, as pressure to reduce antibiotic usage increases,” she says. “Feed conversion remains a top trait for maternal and terminal lines, as feed remains a major production cost.”
Complex Issues Require Novel Strategies
For terminal lines, robustness/vitality in the nursery phase, including pigs that are easy to start on feed, has increased in importance. Robustness and predictability will always be valued, says Justin Holl, senior product development director for PIC. He thinks of this in a couple of ways: selection opportunities and customer experience.
“Technology platforms are evolving quickly and opening doors to capture new data and improve existing data flows,” Holl says. “This allows us to make a more direct impact on traits of interest. Historical technical barriers for some traits made genetic progress more difficult in the past. We are overcoming these barriers.”
Specifically for producers’ experiences, the evolution of the industry and available intervention strategies have pressurized things like behavior or disease resistance.
“These are complex issues that require us to develop novel strategies with practical and reliable slat-level results. It is tempting to focus on one area,” Holl says. “However, it has always made sense to improve the potential for biological performance in a thoughtful and balanced manner, such as the linkage of total born and teat number, carcass lean and quality, or both the performance of maternal products as a sow producing wean pigs and her impact on the progeny performance postweaning; we don’t expect that to change.”
What Does Balance Look Like?
A balanced breeding objective will take on a different definition for pork producers going forward, says Clint Schwab, vice president of technology and customer success at AcuFast Genetics, LLC.
Not only will new areas be incorporated into selection programs as a result of available technology, but Schwab points out more importantly, the demands on genetic products will rapidly increase in the context of changing labor, health and environmental conditions in the pork industry.
Schwab believes the mainstay profit drivers such as feed efficiency and pigs per sow per year will remain, but a new layer of traits will become increasingly important.
“These traits are frankly harder to change,” he says. “Categories of behavior, welfare and resilience are becoming more prominent.”
For example, today’s sow shows frequent examples of exceeding current expectations of genetic potential in many elements of productivity.
“Although they’ve demonstrated the existing genetic potential in current lines in the industry, it’s now a matter of making these examples more repeatable and easier to attain,” Schwab says. “Part of this equation relates to the genetics of the female herself, but a large portion has to do with how she’s managed, which further underlines the need for ensuring the multiple changes in the industry work in concert.”
Speaking of labor, its challenges are only increasing, Rathje says. This pushes genetic programs to create an easier-to-manage sow and a pig that requires less intervention to thrive and reach its genetic potential.
“It is hard to have a team effectively implement a foster sow strategy,” Rathje says. “We need a sow that can produce and raise a high-quality pig on her own and this reality has impacted the way we measure certain phenotypes and what traits are important in a selection program designed for the U.S. market.”
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