Barrie Hicks, UK Sales Manager accepting the award from Nigel Lodge, National Veterinary Manager, Zoetis

The judges commented that "Hermitage Seaborough is unique among Breeding Companies in the UK in that they make the Hermitage Pig BLUP Breeding Programme available for their customers to use. This enables producers to access, and become part of, the Hermitage Pig BLUP Exchange performance database. Since 2009 when the technology first became available in the UK, this part of the business has seen significant annual growth. An excellent product from an established breeding company, showing clear vision with vast potential to help actual farmers in the field, very much addressing an industry need."

Hermitage Seaborough continues to increase the number of producers that are using their Closed Herd Breeding Programmes, which are available to customers who produce their own replacement gilts from using a Grandparent nucleus or a rotational cross breeding programme. This has been an integral component in optimizing genetic performance and increasing customers’ breeding herd output to over 30 pigs /sow /year.

Andrew Freemantle, who won the Pig Farmer of the Year Award at the same ceremony is one such customer who has seen the benefits of using the Hermitage Seaborough breeding programme. Since introducing the Closed Herd BLUP Programme in 2010, Andrew has seen his breeding herd performance steadily increase from 23 pigs / sow per year to just under 29 pigs / sow / year.

Hermitage Seaborough are constantly developing the technology and are developing an online portal for their customers using the programme so they can access their own herd data in real time on a daily basis.