Ternary pig is a hybridization mode of pigs, at present, pig hybridization mainly includes binary hybridization, ternary hybridization, quaternary hybridization, in production practice, ternary hybridization is the most common.
What is hybridization?
Hybridization refers to mating between individuals of different varieties or strains. It is called the father of the boar, the mother of the sow, and the offspring are called hybrids.
In pig production, the name for hybrids is usually the father breed in the front and the mother breed in the back. For example, the binary sow produced by the long white pig as the father and the large white pig as the mother is called the "growing" sow. The purpose of using hybridization in pig production is to use the "hybrid advantage" to produce offspring with stronger adaptability and higher production performance than the original breed and strain. The main reason for the hybrid advantage is that the complementarity of excellent dominant genes and the increase in the frequency of heterozygotes in the population will inhibit or weaken the role of bad genes, so that the vitality, disease resistance, tolerance and fertility of pigs will be improved, feed utilization will be improved and daily weight gain will increase.
It should be emphasized that "hybrids" do not necessarily have "advantages", mainly depending on the quality of the two parents and the degree of complementarity of excellent genes.
Common ternary pigs
There are two major categories of ternary pigs, one is the outer ternary pig, and the other is the inner ternary pig.
The breeding mode of ternary pigs is A× (B×C), where A is the terminal boar, B is the maternal paternal, and C is the matrilineal mother. If it is an outer ternary pig, it means that the 3 pig breeds used for hybridization are all imported pig breeds from abroad; if one or two pig breeds are local breeds, and the foreign imported pig breeds are the father, such as Duroc, it belongs to the inner ternary pig.
At present, the domestic and foreign ternary pigs in the pig market are the mainstream, and the foreign ternary pigs are dominated by "Du Growing" pigs. The breeding mode is to first use the York sow and the long white boar to cross, give birth to the growing binary sow, and then use the Duroc boar and the growing binary sow to mate, the piglet produced is the Du long foreign ternary pig, which is the most ideal pig hybridization mode at present.
There are also off-farm ternary hybridization models that use Duroc as the father and the large binary sow as the mother, but there are not many adopters.
In normal years, China's annual pigs are about 680 million heads, and the market proportion of ternary pigs exceeds 95%, of which the market proportion of foreign ternary pigs exceeds 80%. In other words, ternary pigs are the most competitive in pig production.
Advantages and disadvantages of outer ternary pigs and inner ternary pigs
From the dimension analysis of production performance, the outer ternary pig has the advantages of fast growth rate, high feed-meat ratio, high lean meat rate, good adaptability, and small stress, but the inner ternary pig also has the advantages of rough feeding, high reproductive performance, and slightly better meat taste, and the two have their own advantages.
From the perspective of the market dimension, the outer ternary pig is more popular, and in general, the price of the barn is higher than that of the inner ternary pig.
Finally, it should be emphasized that if you want to raise pigs, it is recommended to prefer the outer ternary pig, which is much less difficult to make money than raising native pigs.