Breeds

 Danish Landrace (LL)

The Danish Landrace is one of the female races in the Danish cross breeding program used for the production of LY/YL young sows.  Because of the Landrace’s extremely high fertility and good reproductive characteristics and slaughter quality; sows of this race are often used to birth YL-sows, which are the best hybrid sows for the production of slaughter hogs. The Danish Landrace is a strong pig with good legs and is noted for its ability to farrow many living pigs

 Danish Yorkshire (YY)

The Danish Yorkshire, just like the Landrace, is used for female breeds.  At the same time, it is the best breed with regards to reproductive capabilities.  This breed features a high lean meat percent, high daily gain,  good feed conversion ratios and a good meat quality. Fertility, strength and maternal instincts are the Yorkshire’s essential productivity qualities. Denmark is the only country in the world where there can be found, among other things, a program called “LG5” – Living pigs in 5 days.  And this will make it possible within a few years for a LY/YL sow to produce 40 pigs/sows per year.

The Danish Duroc originates in the United States and Canada, from which it was imported during the period 1977 – 1979.  It was first used as a boar breed in cross-breeding programs. Since its importation, The Danish Duroc has been improved; especially with respect to lean meat percent. Today, DanBred has the largest population of pure bred Durocs in Europe. The Danish Duroc does well as a boar breed in combination with LY-sows. The Danish Duroc produces the most rapidly growing butcher hog with good food conversion rates and a high lean meat percent. As an added advantage, the Danish Duroc produces carcasses with good meat and eating quality due to a small portion of intramuscular fat.

To obtain full hybrid vigor with both sows and their progeny, it is necessary to use three breeds in a cross-breeding program. The use of sows after initial crossbreeding results in complete hybrid vigor as a characteristic among these sows.  If boars from a third breed  are paired with these sows, then the fully characteristic hybrid vigor can be obtained as a quality in their progeny. In this way, the use of three-way crossbreeding can be used to avoid the typical decrease in hybrid vigor which characterizes backwards cross-breeding.