Litters for pigs reached their highest level which helped futures for hogs slip from their highest prices in four months, Bloomberg reports.
According to information from the U.S. Agriculture Department, the herd that breeds hogs was 1.2 percent smaller on December 1 of this year as compared to the same date in 2009. For the quarter ending November 30, sows produced average 9.89 pigs per litter, which marked a record rate.
"The breeding herd was smaller, but again we had more pigs per litter, so that's keeping our hog numbers fairly stable," Lawrence Kane, a market adviser at Stewart-Peterson Group in Yates City, Illinois, told Bloomberg. "It seems like every time we cut sows by 1 percent, the pigs per litter go up by 2 percent."
Prices for February-delivery hogs slipped 0.225 cents to 78.625 cents per pound shortly after 1 p.m. on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. That 0.1 percent fall represents the first decline in seven trading sessions.
Thus far this year, hog futures are up 25 percent, which would mark the largest animal climb since 1978.
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