Farmer Focus: Benchmarking confirms strong sow performance
© MAG/Colin Miller It feels as though 2026 is already flying by and we are still playing catch-up after a bit of time off over Christmas.
One thing we were really hoping to push on with early in the new year was getting some ex-stewardship areas ready for cereal drilling.
We needed ideal conditions for a mower pre-cultivations but, instead, we have so far had 72mm of rain – so it doesn’t look like that plan will come to fruition anytime soon.
I expect spring barley will be our harvest 2026 cash crop now, instead of the late winter wheat we were planning on.
See also:Â How collecting weight data helps improve pig unit efficiency
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On the pigs, I have been of taking stock of where we are in this accounting year (since 1 April 2025).
I’m really happy with the health and performance of the pigs and this is evidenced by some fantastic performance figures.
So far in the nine-month period, pigs weaned a sow a year is at 33.41. A huge contributor to this impressive figure is our low pre-weaning mortality of 4%.
The top 10% of our benchmarking group is 4.56%, and the average for the benchmarking group is 12.38%, so a really great job done by the animals and the staff to achieve this.
Our average liveborn figure is quite low, at 14.84 a litter, compared with the top 10% in our benchmarking group, which is a huge 17.04 a litter.
This particular KPI ranks us at 77th out of the 148 farms in the group, at the time of the last report, whereas for the weaned pigs a litter, we are placed 22nd.
What that tells me is that our balance is pretty good, in that we are middle of the range for the numbers born, but top 15% for numbers weaned.
Therefore, the pressure to try to increase the numbers born isn’t quite as it would seem if you looked at that figure in the benchmarking table in isolation.
In terms of the rearing and feeding herd, our average finished weight has been 100.8kg, with a feed conversion ratio of 2.1 from an entry weight into the rearing herd averaging 8.9kg.
Our other KPIs such as daily liveweight gain and feeding days a pig are hard to compare in the combined herd benchmarking, as producers’ finishing weights vary significantly, but I’m happy with our figures of 629g and 146.1, respectively.