Modern sows are bred for very high reproductive rates, creating welfare costs from metabolic strain, health failures, and early culling. Balancing efficiency and welfare is a key challenge in pig farming.
The sow is arguably the most welfare-compromised animal in modern pig farming. Selected for extreme reproductive productivity, high-producing sows experience repeated cycles of metabolic depletion, chronic lameness from the physical demands of successive pregnancies, and early culling when production declines. Hyperprolific litter sizes exceed what sows can adequately suckle, requiring management interventions including split suckling and nurse sows that disrupt natural mother-piglet relationships. The welfare cost of high reproductive efficiency is distributed across the sow's entire productive life as a cumulative burden of metabolic stress, pain, and deprivation. Breeding programs that include welfare traits explicitly and balance productivity against longevity and robustness represent the most effective long-term intervention available.