When we started liquid feeding in 1986 we had our fill of whey. With lots of
\nwhey, all we wanted to do was feed pigs cheap with little concern for feed
\nconversion. We designed our system around this abundant product. When
\nwe no longer had access to this cheap feed source we had to change our
\nmindset. We tried other products like DDGS, corn steep water and CDS, but
\nall of these didn\u2019t quite work since we didn\u2019t know then what we know now
\nabout their characteristics. When we used a corn\/soy diet our feed costs went
\nway up. Slowly we realized that we had to change our focus from growth to
\nfeed conversion. That wasn\u2019t easy because for many years our goal was
\ngrowth. Now we started focusing on low feed conversion and 800 to 900
\ngrams per day growth in the finishing barn. We started with a Feed
\nConversion that was higher than 3 in our finishing barns and have worked our
\nway back to the present level of 2.5 \u2013 2.6. How did we do that? The first key
\nwas 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
\nevery day.
\nThe second more complex thing we did was ration design. We produce our
\nown gilts and boars so our genetics are unique and so our rations had to be
\nunique. We added fat to our diet to see what our pigs would do with this extra
\nenergy. After some trials we found that it added efficient gain. So we
\nwondered what extra protein would do. We bumped up the soybean meal and
\ngot more efficient gain. What we want to do is meet the growth potential of
\nour pigs. And the only way to do that is to measure feed intake and growth
\nand follow trials through both successes and mistakes to perfect your own
\nbest feed ration for your facility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[930],"tags":[4685,8882,7472,7473,1060,6113,5162,785,7474,23045,8547,2235,6431,6784,190,583,19644,5208,577,25122,27278,2851,6904,46,7475,5108,925,18410,1293,108,124,27025,3804,502,20007,105,23139,3322,158,2093,8279,3261,21476,48,15459,14,33,16262,17743,5111,20912,26478,3780,10101,20911,6053,69,1286,2481],"class_list":["post-4675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-production","tag-access","tag-al","tag-alternative-feed-ingredients","tag-alternative-feedstuff","tag-barn","tag-barns","tag-boar","tag-boars","tag-cdg","tag-cheap","tag-complex","tag-conversion","tag-corn-steep-water","tag-cos","tag-cost","tag-costs","tag-dd","tag-ddgs","tag-diet","tag-eet","tag-energy","tag-fat","tag-fee","tag-feed","tag-feed-conversion","tag-feed-cost","tag-feed-intake","tag-feed-pig","tag-feeder","tag-feeding","tag-finishing","tag-finishing-barns","tag-genetic","tag-genetics","tag-gh","tag-gilt","tag-gilt-management","tag-gilts","tag-growth","tag-ingredient","tag-liquid-feed","tag-liquid-feeding","tag-liquid-whey","tag-management","tag-ped","tag-pig","tag-pigs","tag-pl","tag-prod","tag-ration","tag-some","tag-soya-meal-for-pigs","tag-soybean-meal","tag-start","tag-t","tag-use","tag-water","tag-whey","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}