Exterior indicators of maternal breed pigs at different stages of ontogenesis

Relevance. The article presents the indicators of growth and development of the industrial population of sows of the maternal breed used for three-breed industrial crossbreeding. It was found that the sows of the mother breed selected for research according to parametric biostatistics have homogeneous values in terms of live weight, absolute, average daily, and relative gains in terms of body composition indices. Methods. Purebred pigs of the Yorkshire mother breed (250 heads) were used as an object. Repair pigs were evaluated during bonification at the age of reaching a live weight of 100 kg, in sows these estimates were taken from the automated system of zootechnical accounting “Hybrid”. Results. On average, the animals had a live birth weight of more than 1.2 kg and reached a live weight of more than 100 kg by the age of 108 days. The coefficient of variation in the sample under study is low and varies from 4.24 to 14.54%, which indicates the uniformity of the sample and its representativeness. The parametric criteria of the population (X, Mo, Me) in the selected group of pigs in terms of live weight in different periods of ontogenesis were actually at the same level. The average age of reaching a live weight of 100 kg was 170.91 days. Due to the uniformity of body weight indicators in different periods of ontogenesis, a similar pattern has been established in terms of absolute, average daily and relative weight gains of repair sows. Based on the assessment obtained, depending on the gradations developed by the authors according to significant external characteristics of animals, the sow population was divided into 3 groups. The leading group included 103 heads (41% of the total livestock studied), 86 heads (35%) in the mediocre group, and 61 heads (24%) in the commodity group. The presence of the largest number of animals of an outstanding group in the population indicates the high genetic potential of the animals of the studied population.