VÖS – JAHRESBERICHT 2005 Schweinehaltung in ... - Schweine.at

Pig Production in Austria Seite 34
farms as other livestock as well. Until joining the EU a livestock limitation law
did not allow the farmers to keep more than 50 sows and 400 fattening pigs
per farm without an extra permit. This law is now a reason for the small
production units and the high production costs. Nowadays a concentration
process is going on, where small farms are running out of business and
specialized pig farms are expanding their production so that in general the
production capacity is not decreasing. From 1980 to 2005 about 75% of the
pig farmers went out of business, but there was a low decrease in production
capacity.
6.3 Pig breeding
Today nearly all slaughter pigs come from 2- or 3- breed crossbreeding
programs with Pietrain as terminal sire line. Belgian Landrace has no
importance anymore. The dam line consists of Large White (2-breed crosses,
mainly in Styria) and Large White x Landrace (3-breed crosses). Landrace x
Duroc as a dam line is used in only a few herds in Lower Austria. The early start
of crossbreeding programs, organised by the breeders themselves, is one of
the reasons why international breeding companies play no important rule on
the Austrian market of breeding stock until now. Purebreeding is done in 199
herds which causes a breeding structure with very small herds.
Due to demands of the Austrian fresh pork market most emphasis in selection
was put on high lean meat content from the beginning. In 1985 a selection
index considering feed conversion ratio, daily gain, lean meat content and a
meat quality index was introduced.
The meat quality index consisting of pH-value, drip-loss and meat colour was
used to improve the meat quality in addition to the effort of eliminating the
halothane gene in the dam lines with consequent testing schemes and
genotyping the MHS-gene later on. Today the dam lines are completely stress
free as well as some of the NN-Pietrain lines, which are being forced.
With implementation of a multivariate animal model BLUP-procedure, which is
happening right now, the breeding goal has been changed too. Improving
fattening traits, especially daily gain, holding the lean meat content and the
good meat quality with an increase of intramuscular fat content is the
breeding goal for the dam line in addition to the improvement of
reproduction traits (breeding value for number of piglets weaned).
For Pietrain daily gain and meat quality including intramuscular fat content
should be improved and for the NN-lines an increase of lean meat content is
still wanted.