The Implications of Changing Age and Weight at Slaughter of Heavy Pigs on Carcass and Green Ham Quality Traits

Simple Summary Conventional rearing systems for heavy pigs intended for Italian dry-cured ham production require pigs to be slaughtered at 160 +/- 16 kg and a minimum age of 9 months. With the current animal genetic trends providing progressively leaner animals, the conventional rearing system fails to provide pigs with optimal characteristics for the dry-cured ham industry. In this research, new combinations of age and weight at slaughter were explored, using different feeding conditions, as possible alternative rearing strategies for heavy pigs. Such alternative rearing strategies aimed to manipulate the growth rate of pigs, first allowing them to reach 160 +/- 16 kg slaughter weight at a younger age; second, allowing pigs to maximize their slaughter weight at 9 months of age; and third, inducing slow growth in the pigs to reach the 160 +/- 16 kg body weight at an older age. The first two strategies were the most promising alternatives as they improved the rate of gain, feed efficiency, and ham adiposity of the pigs. While the first strategy was the most economically convenient, the second produced the hams with the highest quality. Italian dry-cured ham production requires pigs to be slaughtered at 160 +/- 16 kg at 9 months of age (control, C). The study explored three alternatives, based on different feeding conditions: (1) allowing pigs to express their growth potential by letting them reach 160 +/- 16 kg slaughter weight (SW) at younger slaughter age (SA) (younger Age, YA); (2) allowing pigs to express their growth potential by maximizing their SW at 9 months SA (greater weight, GW); (3) increasing the SA required to reach 160 +/- 16 kg SW (older age, OA). Pigs (336 C21 Goland, 95 kg initial body weight) were slaughtered on average at 257, 230, 257, and 273 d SA and 172.7, 172.3, 192.9, and 169.3 SW kg for the four treatments, respectively. C pigs had an average daily gain (ADG) of 715 g/d and feed efficiency (FE) of 0.265 (gain to feed). Compared to C, YA pigs had higher ADG (+32%), FE (+7.5%), and better ham adiposity; GW pigs had higher carcass weight (+12%), ADG (+25%), trimmed ham weight (+10.9%), and better ham adiposity. OA treatment affected ADG (-16.4%), FE (-16.6%), and trimmed ham weight (-3.6%). YA and GW could be promising alternatives to C as they improved FE and ham quality traits.