It is important to look at pork production from the point of not only minimizing costs but also increasing margins. Dead market hogs are not viewed as a cost of production. It is an opportunity cost that represents not achieving full potential. Cull pigs, dead pigs, and lightweight pigs are often lumped into the same category of economic loss. Most real losses of pork production involve pigs not achieving proper weight. Dead pigs are widely considered by producers as naturally occurring and that nothing can really be done about it. This is less than true as studies have shown that many farms have uncommonly high mortality rates which results in true potential not being reached.

Three things can be done to address problems of cull, dead and lightweight pigs, and these include: 1) Counting and recording dead and culled pigs; 2) Estimating the losses from each category; and 3) Identify causes of attrition.