How does
the reproduction cycle effect the price
of pork?
A female pig will have
her first litter of piglets when she is about one year old. The sow is
pregnant for about 4 months, and usually a sow will give birth to around
8 to 12 pigs at a time. A sow can have 2 litters each year. That means
that a mother pig can give birth to over 20 piglets each
year!
It takes 24 months for
a steer or heifer to grow large enough to yield 600 lbs of meat and they
can only reproduce one offspring per year. Compared to a hog,
which only takes six months to grow to a size that will yield 250 lbs of
meat and they can reproduce at a rate of 10 to 20 offspring every six
months or one year.
On the other hand, a
lamb takes one year to grow large enough to yield 100 lbs of meat and
they can only reproduce at the rate of one per year. Poultry
reproduces (lays eggs) several times per week. It takes 22 weeks
for a turkey to grow large enough to yield 22 lbs of meat and a chicken
only 6 to 8 weeks to grow 3 lbs. All of this has a lot with the
prices we pay.
