Pigs

There are approximately 9 million pigs in Italy, 85% of which are concentrated in the Po valley regions traditionally devoted to swine farming and pork processing (hams and salami).
The procurement rate of pork is approximately 65% which makes Italy an importer of both live animals and animal products.
The Italian average pro capita consumption is approximately 31 kilograms: the trend has appeared stable over the past decade.
Swine farming has been the focus of deep structural and organisational changes in order to remain ahead of new domestic and European Community market requirements.
As a result, factory farms in which the livestock is kept in separate facilities have become increasingly common. This promotes the creation of a suitable bio-safe system to improve the health of the animals and boost their production.
In such a system, each step is monitored and coordinated across three different production facilities:
Facility 1 Breeding
Facility 2 Post-weaning
Facility 3 Growing-finishing

Breeding

This is unquestionably a key step, capable of deeply effecting the farm’s profitability.
The fertility of today’s swine breeds is remarkable (more than 30 piglets/sow a year): the nutritional requirements of sows are today higher in terms of quantity and quality, and specific and balanced feed is a must. After farrowing, the piglets are weaned when they are usually from three to four weeks old. Before this, the litter is fed with sow-milk and often with appropriate food supplements (in liquid and solid form) from the first week of life to promote a suitable morphological and functional development of the gastrointestinal tract.

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Post-weaning

When they reach, according to their age, a weight in the range from 6 to 8 kilograms, piglets from the farrowing room are housed in special pens on ground level or overhead cages in groups of variable number.
This is a very sensitive step in which drastic physiological and morphological changes take place, specifically on gastrointestinal tract level. Diet is thus crucial for the health and the productive performance of the piglets.
The piglets are mainly free-fed, with constant availably of fresh, appetising feed.  Liquid feeding systems have been recently introduced. The feeding programme consists in supplying two or three types of feed according to the age and live weight of the piglets. The post-weaning step lasts for approximately 55 to 60 days at the end of which the piglet reaches a live weight of 28 to 30 kilograms.

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Growing-finishing

Italian swine farming is aimed at the production of:
- light slaughter pigs
- heavy pigs.
The latter type is prevalent.
The growing and finishing step lasts for approximately 190-200 days at the end of which the pig reaches an optimal slaughtering weight of 165-170 kg.
The animals are appropriately fed with three or four different diets, applying the so-called “step feeding” principle to optimise the efficiency of the animal in terms of its nutritional needs, to obtain excellently flavoured meat and to effectively reduce the polluting load of the farm on the environment.

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