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Boar winner opts for semen
Winner of the free draw for a £1,000 boar, run by pig-breeding company ACMC Ltd at the British Pig and Poultry Fair, is John Walker, general manager of farming company, W & J S Temporal Ltd, Bolsover, Chesterfield, Derbyshire.
Due to the fact that the 380-sow herd at Mill Farm is batch-farrowed on a three-weekly basis, John Walker decided to take his prize as £1,000 worth of semen rather than a boar for natural service.
All finishing pigs are taken to bacon weight (about 76 kg deadweight) and now that a PCV2 vaccine is being used to overcome the health problems associated with wasting disease, John is hoping to improve growth rate by using nominated Vantage boars from ACMC’s high health AI stud in East Yorkshire.
ACMC is unique in that it doesn’t ‘pool’ semen from boars after collection and John likes the fact that he can check the figures of individual boars for growth traits before using their semen. In fact, he will be carrying out a trial to monitor and compare the performance of pigs from these boars with other pigs on the unit.
He is using 80 doses of semen every three weeks so over 1,000 pigs finishing will be involved in the comparison.
Before standing to AI the boars are accurately and individually tested for growth rate and feed conversion and other performance-related traits. This information is available to potential buyers. John Walker has nominated several boars in the Vantage range with specific traits to meet his unit’s requirements.
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