It is not the ability to collect grow-finish records but the utility in their collection that inhibits many farms from collecting this information. On many farms the information collected is underutilized. In many cases, groups of pigs are monitored and the describing characteristics are only calculated infrequently. The describing characteristics are usually limited to a few numbers such as average daily gain, feed conversion, mortality rate and cull rate. If there is a problem these numbers are not easily manipulated to describe reasons for the poor performance.
Greater detail is needed to provide adequate definition of problems and solutions in many cases.
It is my experience that the most common of measurement of pig health is usually sick pigs and dead pigs, especially pigs that die suddenly. This reliance upon mortality may result in an overemphasis of factors which do not have a large effect upon profitability. Sex It is well recognized that sex does have an effect upon performance and always should be recorded to provide some guidance as to the expected performance of the population of pigs. This is important to accurately define calculations such as average daily gain and feed conversion. These pigs have contributed to the performance and should be included in many of the calculations.