The latest results from InterPIG prove that, once again, Denmark’s production costs are among Europe’s lowest. DanBred’s many years of professional experience with balanced breeding has contributed to the high efficiency of Danish pigs that results in the low costs of production.
Breeding for efficiency
For many years, DanBred has focused on breeding pigs that are more efficient in relation to the important finisher pig traits, such as feed efficiency and growth. This means that pig producers can produce more pork with fewer resources.
The high efficiency is one of the main reasons why Denmark has some of the lowest production costs in the world. When you buy DanBred genetics, you will also get access to genetically superior pigs, which are world-class at converting feed into growth.
Productive sows
When considering production costs, Denmark is actually a high labour costs country. However, the very productive sows help compensate for this.
Denmark achieves the highest number of weaned pigs per litter by far. In 2023, the Danish sows weaned an average of 15.6 piglets per litter, which is an increase of 0.3 pigs per litter compared to 2022. Belgium takes second place with 13.9 weaned pigs per litter, i.e. 1.7 pigs less per litter than Denmark.
Figure 1: Weaned pigs per litter, 2023
Source: SEGES Innovation
Among other things, this progress is due to DanBred’s great breeding progress for piglet survival. In 2022, DanBred made a significant change to the breeding goal, where two new traits for piglet survival were included: the piglet’s own ability to survive and the sow’s ability to make sure her piglets survive.
From 2022 to 2023, piglet survival has improved by 1 percentage point in production herds with DanBred genetics. DanBred’s Breeding & Genetics department at the Danish Agriculture & Food Council has stated that production herds with DanBred genetics can expect 2 percentage point improvement in piglet survival from 2023 to 2024 – the latest forecasts even show that the improvement is approaching 2.5 percentage points.
Efficient finisher pigs
Denmark is also the clear winner when we look at daily growth. This further underlines the high efficiency of Danish pig production.
Figure 2: Daily gain, 2023
Source: SEGES Innovation
Low production costs
Despite higher prices and labour costs, Denmark excels in terms of low production costs. Brazil and the US have the lowest costs of production, but Denmark have some of the lowest production costs compared to the other European countries. Only Belgium achieves lower production costs than Denmark (however, it is worth noting that Belgium’s result is based on a limited amount of data).
For many years, DanBred’s balanced breeding programme has contributed to more productive pigs. Due to this progress, DanBred finisher pigs have improved the feed efficiency by 0.08 kg less feed per kg growth since 2018. At the same time, daily growth has improved by 123 g for DanBred finisher pigs since 2018. Moreover, DanBred piglets are more vital and robust than previously, which results in more weaned pig per litter. This means that fewer sows can produce the same number of finisher pigs with less feed than before.
Figure 3: Production costs, 2023
Source: SEGES Innovation
Denmark stands out as a global leader within efficient pig production – both when we look at sows and finisher pigs. This is partly due to the focus and progress of DanBred’s balanced breeding programme. In the future, we will continue to contribute to your bottom line with breeding progress for the traits with economic importance for your pig production.
