Selection for hyperprolific sow breeds has increased litter sizes beyond what sows can rear, creating welfare challenges for surplus piglets. Understanding this challenge guides ethical breeding decisions.
The hyperprolificacy welfare problem reveals a fundamental tension between productive efficiency and welfare that genetic selection for single traits creates. A sow producing 20 piglets when she has 14 functional teats cannot rear all offspring without systematic intervention. The piglets born to these litters and who do not receive adequate colostrum experience the welfare costs of immune vulnerability and starvation risk. Those who are crushed die from acute trauma. The welfare of the sow herself is also affected — the physiological demands of very large litter rearing are significant. Breeding objectives that include teat number, piglet birth weight, and pre-weaning survival alongside litter size represent a welfare-informed correction to the single-trait efficiency logic that created this problem.