André van Lankveld, Swine Technical Manager, BIOMIN Gmbh (Austria)

The higher slaughter weights will influence:

• meat quality: More backfat depth (sow worse meat percentage), bigger lion, bigger hams, more intra muscular fat.
• growth rate can drop down after certain weights, this influences the feed conversion rates extremely. This is depending on genetics, sexe, health status and temperature.
• The influence of the increase of backfat depth is depending genetic, sexe, health status (often SPF status have higher backfat depth because of the increased feed intak capacity).

There are a few reasons to slaughter on higher weights:

• if you have only fatteners, your investment (buying piglets) can be written down over more weights, certainly interesting by higher piglets prices
• for farmers most of the time the efficiency of the farms increases, produced kg meat / square meter building.
• the slaughter costs per pig stays the same, but your slaughter costs per kg of meat will go down
• modern genetics from today can grow more efficient on higher weights
• slaughterhouses can get a better price with bigger lion’s and hams.

Disadvantages of slaughter pigs heavier conditions:

• higher feed costs due to the deterioration of feed conversion.

Read comments from other experts in the full Hot topic in issue № 1 (19), 2014 «Profitable Pig Production»