Quarterly Hogs and Pigs Report
Last Friday, USDA released the Quarterly Hogs and Pigs report. Most of the key numbers in the report were in line with pre-report expectations, but there were a couple of notable discrepancies. The Dec.-Feb. pig crop was on the low side of expectations. Dec.-Feb. farrowings were actually higher than expected at 99.2 percent of the prior year. On the other hand, pigs-saved-per-litter was below expectations. On average, pre-report estimates of pigs-saved-per-litter for Dec.-Feb. called for that number to be up by almost two percent compared to the prior year. Actual pigs-saved-per-litter for Dec.-Feb. was up by only 0.6 percent to 10.29 pigs per litter.

The Dec.-Feb. timeframe typically represents a seasonally down time for pigs-saved-per-litter, but the seasonal dip in last week’s report was a bit larger than would have been expected. Figure 1 shows quarterly pigs-saved-per-litter from the Quarterly Hogs and Pigs reports along with a predicted pigs-saved-per-litter series from an equation estimated using data from March 2003 through March 2013 (i.e., before the impact of PEDv on the data).
Data

To see the complete report, please click here: