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Industry Partners
Prairie Swine Centre is an affiliate of the University of Saskatchewan
Prairie Swine Centre is grateful for the assistance of the George Morris Centre in developing the economics portion of Pork Insight.
Financial support for the Enterprise Model Project and Pork Insight has been provided by:
Surviving the Tough Times
Posted in: Economics, Pork Insight Articles, Prairie Swine Centre, Production by admin on July 10, 2017
This lecture offers a variety of methods for reducing cost of operation and increasing revenue.
A feed budget: Provides a foundation of expected performance. Actual measures of
performance can be measured and compared with the expectations. If there is a shortfall in performance, corrective action can be taken.
Seasonal diets: When seasons change, nutrient specifics should be reexamined, as hot weather diets are typically quite different from cold weather diets.
Split-sex feeding: Is not frequently practiced due to the practical challenge of delivering different diets. The savings are worth the effort. Barrows grow 8-10% faster than gilts. Gilts require diets 7-10% higher amino acid levels over barrows. Previous research at PSC shows that split sex and phase feeding combined increases net income by about $4.50 per pig.
Reformulating diets during volatile times in the market: Much of the benefit of phase feeding will be lost however if diets are not regularly reformulated to reflect current ingredient markets.
Hitting the core: A simple method developed at the Centre involves weighing all pigs at the first shipping day. All pigs in the correct weight are shipped that day, but by knowing the typical ADG, you can project forward one week and mark those pigs with a distinct colour that will be ready next week, and different from the colour markings on the pigs to be shipped this week. There are herds that have improved their ability to market only 70% in the core and increase this to 90%+ using this method.
Wet/dry feeders: Address the water wastage concern by incorporating a nipple drinker in the feed bowl as the only source of water, reducing water use by 30%, and slurry volume by 20-40%.