Pig productive performance parameters and costs in Spain: evolution from 2015 to 2024

Abstract

Abstract Background The goals of the present work were to describe reliable reference values and their temporal evolution for production parameters and pig production cost from 2015 to 2024 in Spain. Between 109 and 123 pig production companies from Spain were included in this study from 2015 to 2024. Monthly data on feed consumption, number of pigs produced, expenses and census collected in herds of these companies were standardized and used to calculate cost and production parameters. The collected data each month was merged to obtain a yearly average value considering the pig production flow each month. A generalized linear mixed model was performed to evaluate the association between the production performance and cost variables and the year, geographical location and its interaction. Results The production performance has been continuously improving in the piglet production and fattening phase from 2015 to 2020 and from 2015 to 2022, respectively. Thus, the number of piglets per sow per year increased 0.4 by year and the feed conversion ratio decreased 0.025 by year during the former time periods. This trend changed suddenly in 2020 and 2022 for the piglet production and fattening phase, respectively. The introduction of a high virulent PRRS strain (HP-PRRSV) may have played a key role. On the other hand, the production performance in the nursery phase has been continuously worsening since 2015 probably due to the reduction of antibiotic use since this year, the ban of zinc oxide in 2022 and the introduction of the HP-PRRSV since 2020. On the other hand, feed price was quite constant from 2015 to 2020 but suffered a huge increment between 2021 and 2022 and decreased afterwards. The total cost per kilogram of body weight produced showed a similar pattern to the one observed for feed price. This result highlights the relevance of the feed price in the final cost and the impact of health events despite continuous improvement in production performance by genetic selection, management, facilities and feed quality. Conclusion Pig production parameters have generally improved from 2015 to 2020 and worsened afterwards. The cost of pig production has been significantly affected by the feed cost and by the production parameters, especially sow productivity and post-weaning mortality.