Productive Traits of Moravka Breed - Has Anything Changed in Last Sixty Years?

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to present characteristics of autochthonous pig breed Moravka, reared in the previous century, as well as results of investigations of production performance in the last ten years. A collection of available literature data on reproductive, growth, carcass and meat quality traits of Moravka breed was carried out. According to research studies done in the 50-ies of the last century, Moravka females reached sexual maturity at about 5-6 month, whereas breeding maturity was at age of 10-12 months. Average litter size (different parities) was 6.8-8.2 born alive piglets (1.2 kg birth weight). Lactation lasted around 60 days. At weaning piglets weighed 8.7-10.4 kg (i.e. 120-150 g daily gain). Recent studies show that in average the age at first farrowing was 373±10 days, litter size 8.6±1.7 born piglets, and duration of lactation 46.8±3.4 days. Regarding growing/fattening results, only one of old studies reported daily gain in growing phase which was in average 186-197 g (depending of sex), whereas depending on type of feeding and season daily gain for fattening phase was reported between 490 and 660 g (for pigs on feed mixture and intake between 2.5 to 3.2 kg). Reported feed conversion ratio was from 4.4 to 5.1 kg/kg feed mixtures. A more recent research reported piglets to have 31.9 kg at 192 days denoting a growth rate of about 160 g/day in growing phase, whereas pigs fattened from 32 to 94 kg with maize grew 385 g/day (reported feed conversion ratio was 3.74). Backfat thickness (average of measurements along split line) was app. 7 cm (from about 4 to 9 cm) in earlier and app. 4 cm (from about 3 to 6 cm) in recent studies, but it must be noted that slaughter weight was considerably lower in recent studies. The newest research on Longissimus dorsi muscle showed intramuscular fat content of 7.0±0.6%, 21.5±0.2% of proteins with the specific quality traits (pH45=6.53±0.13, pH24=5.65±0.05; CIE L*=48.9±1.4, a*=12.0±1.0, b*=5.9±0.4).