Recording haemoglobin levels in sows, piglets and growing pigs on farm

Abstract

Using haemoglobin levels in blood as a selection criterion for iron content in pork was proposed at the previous AGBU Pig Genetics Workshop (Jones and Hermesch, 2010). Since then, a project has been completed demonstrating that haemoglobin levels recorded on farm using the HemoCue Hb 201+ analyser can indeed be used as a selection criterion for iron content in pork and other pork quality traits. Haemoglobin levels in growing pigs had moderate genetic correlations with iron content in pork, redness of pork and pH 24 hours post mortem (Hermesch and Jones, 2012). However, it was also noted that the recording procedures used on farm during the project should be modified to improve the accuracy of on-farm measures of haemoglobin levels.