• Quality assurance scheme to be rolled out nationally - sappo

Biosecurity high on
Leanside’s agenda
1. What is your policy on biosecurity
and do you think that local producers
take biosecurity seriously
enough?
At Leanside Stud we have actively implemented
a full biosecurity policy (on file)
with management setting the example.
It is extremely important for livestock
producers and suppliers to ensure that
health standards and biosecurity in
general is adhered to. This is important
to protect their own business and that
of their customers and the industry as a
whole. Our livestock has complied with
standards laid out by the Breeder Herd
Health Monitoring Scheme and CSF
Compartmentalisation for a number of
years. With our current expansion plans,
Mockford Farms now also complies with
Compartmentalisation (we have just received
our certificate) and our application
for SAPPO/PPP QA has been processed
and we await the results of our external
audit. Producers have definitely become
more serious about biosecurity in recent
years and cannot afford not to take it
seriously. There is naturally room for
improvement. Biosecurity is all about
managing risk and so it makes sense to
ensure that good standards are upheld
throughout the chain from the breeding
of replacement livestock through to the
consumers.
2. What does the future hold for the
pig breeding industry and on what
breeding characteristics are you going
to focus in the next decade and
why?
The future of pig breeding remains
exciting and challenging. Although
technology has advanced in terms of
making use of information from the pig
genome project, the traditional methods
are developing breeding traits are still
relevant for the upcoming decade and at
Mockford Farms we would like to see a
continued improvement as follows:
• Improvement of numbers born alive –
we have established a good platform for
this and have concentrated on numbers
born alive for 15 years. However, we are
cautious about not letting individual birth
weights drop too much in favour of high
numbers born and consequent problems
with survival and vigorous growth.
At Mockford Farms, we aim to expand
our dedicated dam line genetic base by
doubling the number of Landrace and
Large White sows from about 500 to 1
000. This will enable us to accelerate our
development in all dam line traits including
longevity and milkability.
• Improvement of weaning weights (21
day litter weights) – we are starting to
focus on this in order to equip our producers
to wean better quality piglets so
that a good start is made in the race to
We are starting to focus
on the improvement of
weaning weights in order
to equip our producers
to wean better quality
piglets so that a good
start is made in the race
to maximise profit.
maximise profit. The trick is to balance
total piglets weaned per sow with good
weaning weights and producers should
be targeting weights of 8kg per piglet
while maintaining over 11 weaned per
litter.
• Improvement of sire line traits – as
always, FCR of the growing pig (coupled
with fat percentage and ADG) is extremely
important in running a profitable
production system. Our Duroc pigs have
shown exciting development in recent
years. Our dam line pigs are also being
tweaked conservatively.
One of the things we hope to do
differently at Mockford Farms in the next
decade is to establish partnerships with
the local and international pig breeding
industry in order to better make use of
technology and to expand our genetic
base. This will mean some improvements
in:
• Computer technology and associated
customer benefits
• BLUP technology and implementation
BReediNg
As usual, we focus in the last
edition of Porcus for the year
on the South African breeding
industry. We asked a number of
prominant breeders the following:
1. What is your policy on biosecurity
and do you think that
local producers take biosecurity
seriously enough?
2. What does the future hold for
the pig breeding industry and
on what breeding characteristics
are you going to focus in
the next decade and why?
Peter Mockford (top) and Phillip
Spencer of Leanside/ Mockford Farms
• Marketing and after sales service to
customers
• Expansion of our market into all provinces
in South Africa
• Semen distribution and AI
• Exportation of South African genetics
• Measurement of meat quality traits.
Porcus November/December 2010 17