Replacement Gilt Evaluation and Selection Pocket Guide
This pocket guide is designed to help pork producers more effectively screen
replacement gilt candidates before placing them in their breeding herds.
Visual appraisal can help identify replacement gilts with various problems
that negatively impact sow longevity. The items shown in the pocket guide
include conformation and structural soundness, feet and leg abnormalities, and
reproductive soundness (underlines, external genitalia).
Identifying replacement gilts with one or more of these deficiencies and culling
them, before they enter the breeding program, may be one of the keys to lowering
breeding herd replacement rates and/or mortality rates.
Whether you purchase replacement gilts or you are producing your own in an
internal multiplication program, this pocket guide provides examples of the types of
problems that should be avoided when selecting replacement gilts.
Originally a publication of the Pork Checkoff