Producers or people working with pigs recognise poor group uniformity almost immediately, whether in newborn or weaned piglets. However, often the financial penalty for lack of uniformity is not fully realised until pigs are transferred to slaughter and money exchanges hands for the product produced.
The coefficient of variation (CV) can be used when measuring the spread of bodyweights within a group of pigs and is calculated as the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean. Uniformity is a measure of the evenness of bodyweights within a group and is calculated by 100-CV. Decreasing CV by as little as 1% at the time of slaughter is estimated to be worth €0.65-1.50 per pig produced. For simplicity, we’ll use €1 per pig produced for future calculations.
