The Rural Voice, 1999-03, Page 32Defining a sow
A U.S. task force seeks common terms
in the hog industry to allow better
comparision across the industry
By Keith Roulston
At a time when knowledge will
be the kcy to efficiency gains
in the industry, pork
producers need to speak the same
language, Professor Dennis DiPietre
of the University of Missouri says.
Keynote speaker at the 1999
Centralia Swine Update conference
in Kirkton, January 27, DiPietre said
there arc currently a huge number of
terms bandied about in the industry.
"Ask six pork producers or pork
industry people to give a definition of
what a gilt and a sow are and you are
likely to comc up with six different
responses."
For instance, one producer
describes a gilt as a female which has
not farrowed her first litter and
another classifies her as a female
who has not been mated. Both
definitions can be correct but they
28 THE RURAL VOICE
make it impossible to compare
results from one farm to another.
DiPietre was one of 75 people
chosen from among pork producers,
lenders, accountants, educators,
consultants, industry representatives
and software companies in 1995 to
serve on a task force called the Joint
Committee on Industry Standards.
The charge of the task force was to
develop financial and production
guidelines for the pork industry with
these goals in mind: to promote
uniformity in financial and
production standards by presenting
methods for financial and production
reporting; to present standardized
definitions and methods for
calculating financial and production,
measures and to identify certain
financial and production measures
common to all areas of the country
When is a pig a wearer and when is
it a nursery pig. A U.S. group tries
to get everyone using the same
terminology.
and all pork producers and establish
standardized methods of calculating
those measures.
The task force was broken into
two committees focusing on the
production and financial aspects. The
production committee formulated
common definitions and formulas to
measure and compare the biological
progress of a pork production unit.
The difference in definitions of
what is a sow, for instance, doesn't
matter if a farmer is looking only at
his own barn. If a farmer wants to
compare his farm to others, however,
the definitions must be the same.
For example comparing pigs per
sow per year can vary greatly
depending on what is classified as a
sow. Using one U.S. lender's scale,
for instance, the same producer could
be rated as a poor manager, a good
manager or a moderate manager
depending on whether the number of
Sows was defined as the whole
female population, the number of
sows excluding unmated and mated
parity zero females or only the mated
females.
The committee finally arrived at
the following definitions:
Weaned Pig: a pig that has been