The impact of herd age structure on the performance of commercial sow-breeding farms.

Background: The herd age structure, i.e., distribution of sows within a farm based on their parity number, and its management are essential to optimizing farm reproductive efficiency.

Preweaning piglet survival on commercial farms.

Preweaning piglet mortality (PWM), a trait highly related to litter size, is one of the main concerns associated with productive efficiency and animal welfare in commercial pig farms. The objectives of this work were to study piglet survival at the farm level, to establish a survival rate (SR) as a target indicator to be improved, and to model it based on other reproductive parameters. Analyzed data corresponded to 580 Spanish commercial farms with a total inventory of 809,768 sows.