Larger Than Average Litters of Pigs

I was curious as to the number of piglets in an average Hampshire sow and I came upon an article on the web from a publication called Seedstock EDGE. The National Swine Registry keept track of the Hampshire litters reported from 1995 through 2003 and came up with statistics from over 81,000 litters.

Based on the data, our Nellie and Sally did very much better than average last night as they gave birth to 13 and 14 healthy piglets each. Of course they are just simple east Kentucky Hampshire mutt sows and the boar probably has some Duroc in him, but they have outperformed the purebred swines that these numbers are based on.

The average number of pigs per litter was between 9.26 and 9.60 for each of the 9 years in the study, and the "born alive" number was just between 8.51 and 8.89 piglets. They also tracked the number of piglets that survived to be weaned and it was just between 7.85 and 8.12 per litter.

Nellie and Sally did better than that in 3 of each of their 4 litters so far. (Their first litters, when they were still gilts, they only had 7 and 8 piglets respectively, which we know now was pretty good!)

I just thought that was an interesting bit of info to record here. We are proud of you, Nellie and Sally!

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1 comment
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Morning Sunshine on December 6, 2008 at 12:37 pm
you make pig farming sound so easy! LOL! I remember when you brought them home for the first time, and the excitement with which you posted learning to geld (is that the right term for swine?) a pig. What about the cost of feeding the pigs – how much profit do you make after you factor that in? I am just curious.

Thanks for the pumpkin idea – that was my next plan for storing, somehow whole outside without getting too hot or too cold. Let me know how that works for you, especially towards the end of the winter when things start warming up, and they start getting old. We like to eat pumpkin in chili, soup, pancakes, waffles, muffins, and, of course, pie, so we like to eat it all year round. But I guess there is a season for everything, huh?