When we started liquid feeding in 1986 we had our fill of whey. With lots of
whey, all we wanted to do was feed pigs cheap with little concern for feed
conversion. We designed our system around this abundant product. When
we no longer had access to this cheap feed source we had to change our
mindset. We tried other products like DDGS, corn steep water and CDS, but
all of these didn’t quite work since we didn’t know then what we know now
about their characteristics. When we used a corn/soy diet our feed costs went
way up. Slowly we realized that we had to change our focus from growth to
feed conversion. That wasn’t easy because for many years our goal was
growth. Now we started focusing on low feed conversion and 800 to 900
grams per day growth in the finishing barn. We started with a Feed
Conversion that was higher than 3 in our finishing barns and have worked our
way back to the present level of 2.5 – 2.6. How did we do that? The first key
was trough management. We manage the trough so it is empty to almost dry, between feedings. Sounds easy but you have to stay at it for every trough
every day.
The second more complex thing we did was ration design. We produce our
own gilts and boars so our genetics are unique and so our rations had to be
unique. We added fat to our diet to see what our pigs would do with this extra
energy. After some trials we found that it added efficient gain. So we
wondered what extra protein would do. We bumped up the soybean meal and
got more efficient gain. What we want to do is meet the growth potential of
our pigs. And the only way to do that is to measure feed intake and growth
and follow trials through both successes and mistakes to perfect your own
best feed ration for your facility.