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Factors Affecting Fetal Pig Weight Late in Gestation^{1, 3,}

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Abstract

Eighty litters of 102–108 day-old fetuses from 46 gilts and 34 yearling sows were used in this study.

In gilts, age of dam appears to be responsible for a greater part of the variability in fetus weight than dam's carcass weight or back-fat thickness. In sows carcass weight and back-fat thickness did not account for a significant variation in fetus or membrane weight; age was not studied.

Survival rate, holding litter size constant, did not have a significant effect on fetus or membrane weight in either sows or gilts; litter size had a marked negative effect. There is no definite evidence to indicate that variation in litter size has any effect on fetus weight independent of its association with the number of pigs in a horn. In both parity groups little of that variability in fetus weight caused by variability in litter size and number of pigs per horn was brought about independently of variability in membrane weight.

In both parity groups the fetuses and membranes at the extremes of a uterine horn are larger than those toward the middle, the association being described by a quadratic regression. This quadratic regression coefficient does not change significantly with variation in numbers of fetuses per horn.

¹ Paper from the Department of Genetics No. 650 and the Department of Animal Husbandry, published with the approval of the Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station, supported in part by the Research Committee of the Graduate School from funds supplied by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

³ Aid was given in the collection of some of the data in this study by A. A. Gerbitz and M. M. Lehr. We would also like to acknowledge the assistance given by A. S. El-Sheikh (currently on the Faculty of Agriculture, Ain Shams University, Egypt) in the statistical preparation of the data presented, and to H. W. Norton, University of Illinois for suggestions regarding part of the statistical analyses.

² Ralston-Purina Fellow.

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