- After evaluating several young herd sires at Designed Genetics, there was no question about GREAT NORTHERN being the one we wanted to bring to SGI. Designed Genetics also had him rated as the best prospect they had put back into the herd for some time. Thus, it took some hard negotiating and the agreement that he would stay in Canada for six weeks before the deal was finalized.
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GREAT NORTHERN is a long bodied, big framed boar that has tremendous muscle expression throughout. When viewed down the top, you are certainly impressed with his bold, meaty shoulder, the big groove along his very expressive loin and the extremely thick, long, level rump that hooks into a meaty ham with extra bulge and thickness through the center and stifle regions.
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GREAT NORTHERN has very good bone and is super sound both front and rear. He is an extremely aggressive boar and has an excellent underline with outstanding teat quality and perfect spacing. The Spike line of GREAT NORTHERN’s sire were consistently some of the bigger framed yet more muscular pigs at Designed Genetics.
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GREAT NORTHERN’s sire has been one of the leading sires at Designed Genetics. He has EVSs of –0.05 in backfat and –3.5 days with a 131 EBV index.
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GREAT NORTHERN’s dam ranks at the top of the herd with a Pig Champ SPI of 193. She has averaged 11.0 born live, 9.0 weaned with 1 144-day farrowing interval for 5 litters. Her offspring have consistently performed well with 21 of the 22 offspring tested indexing above the mean. They averaged 143 days, 0.46 backfat and 117.1 index.
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When considering the impact that previous Design Genetics’ boars (Slim Fast, North Star, Iceberg, Gretzky, Canadian, Granite, Canada and Manatoba to nae a few) have made combined with the outstanding phenotype and performance of GREAT NORTHERN, we are confident GREAT NORTHERN will live up to his name and be one of the truly great breeding boars to stand at SGI.
