A five-year-old pig in China, which weighed 900kg at the time of its death, is tipped to have its place in the Guinness Book of Records, the state media reported on Monday.

The pig, in the northeastern province of Liaoning, was 2.5mt in length, had a 2.23mt waistline and a tusk 14.4cm long when it died on February 5, its keeper, Xu Changjin, a veteran farmer in Wafangdian city, said.

Xu said he had kept his pig in a nice sty and fed it quality fodder all its life.

Pigs are not pets in China and are rarely kept for more than three years before they are slaughtered for dinner.

A scientist with Liaoning University, Professor Liu Mingyu, said the pig had died from lack of exercise.

"It had grown too big to move around," he said.

The heaviest pig reported before it -- one in the suburbs of the eastern municipality of Shanghai -- weighed 700kg, Liu added.

Liu has made the pig into a specimen for the Liaoning Provincial Agricultural Museum.

Sources with the museum say they will prepare for its Guinness listing soon.