Identifying factors that influence a sow’s lifetime productivity is difficult and time-consuming as you must wait for the female to transition completely through the swine breeding herd to gain accurate and complete production information. You must also keep females that produce fewer piglets than commercial standards so physiological and biological differences can be determined between high and low lifetime producers. We have categorically identified females that birthed large or small litters and subsequently weaned large or small litters consistently throughout their entire lifetime and used metabolomics to characterize the relative abundance of small biological compounds in their plasma. Future work is needed to verify and validate unique compounds that could be used by producers to identify young females that have a risk of not birthing and raising enough young to provide economic breakeven, thereby removing suspect females prior to entry into the breeding herd.

Read the full article in the Journal of Animal Science.