Three British breeds, Large White, Landrace and Welsh are used widely in producing crossbred sows for commercial slaughter pig production in Zimbabwe. In most cases crossbred sows are mated either to Duroc or Hampshire to produce slaughter progeny. This study was undertaken to evaluate the performance of these five breeds under test station conditions.

The records for this study were obtained from the central test station. The data included 1513 centrally tested pigs over the five year period 1984-88. The traits analysed were daily gain (DG) g, food conversion ratio (FCR) between 35-86 kg, k backfat depth at 86 kg (BF) mm, conformation-score (CS) and leg-score (LS). The data for CS and LS were on a 50-point scale, taken at the end of the test. Animals were fed on a restricted scale during performance testing. The data were analysed by least-squares procedures. For all the traits fixed effects considered in the analysis were season, year, sex, breed, age at start of the test and interactions as appropriate. The season according to month at start of performance test was classified as cold (April-June), dry (July-September), early Summer (October-December) or late Summer (January-March).