PIC: German daughter farm to play key role
To increase the supply of high health and genetically outstanding grandparent gilts PIC has designated the German daughter nucleus farm Sachsendorf/Podelzig in Brandenburg as the key site in Europe for the production of PIC’s Large White (L03) gilts.
In elevating Sachsendorf/Podelzig to this status PIC recognises the global importance of having such a key site for genetic dissemination to both Germany and the whole of Europe. In recent years excellent genetic improvement has been achieved which has been demonstrated through both high performance results and the low genetic lag compared with PIC’s Genetic Nucleus in North America.
Site I (Sachsendorf) houses almost 2000 sows and achieves an average productivity of approximately 30 pigs weaned per sow and year – showing an increase of five piglets during the last five years. With this performance Sachsendorf ranks within the top 10% of all PIC Global Grandparent farms (with almost 413000 productive GGP- and GP-sows). Also, the genetic trend for this site is strongly positive with more than 15 index points of genetic improvement every year due to its tightly managed genetic programme and regular genetic input from the best global genetic source.
While health and bio-security are fundamental to PICs production principles, Sachsendorf/Podelzig was the ideal candidate for this key role as it has excellent health status, biosecurity and is located in an area with low pig density area. The Production Teams led by Remo Neuhäuser in Sachsendorf (breeding) and David Tews in Podelzig (gilt grow-out) have demonstrated the importance of health status and bio-security in conjunction with top genetics for achieving optimum results. The frequent and detailed monitoring required by PIC’s High Health Program reports Sachsendorf/Podelzig as PRRS-negative, EP-negative and RA-negative. Furthermore, the grow-out at Podelzig is listed in the highest quality category for Salmonella-Status under the German QS-System (“Qualität und Sicherheit” – “Quality scheme for Food”, the world’s largest quality assurance scheme for fresh foodstuffs). In awarding the farm as “Farm of best practice in effective health management” last year, Boehringer Ingelheim honoured the teams’ efforts in particular.
Overall, such strong performance in key areas makes it easy to see why the farm has been assigned such a prominent position within PIC’s Global Genetic Improvement structure. Genetically this is an excellent basis to expand PIC’s multiplier capacity for sustainable and long-term production of high quality Camborough gilts in Germany and throughout Europe. Equally as important it will also benefit Closed Herd customers by providing them a readily available source of high quality and high health PIC Genetics, thus allowing expansion and improvement of their breeding herds.
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