Survival Strategies – When Every Penny Counts

Posted in: Prairie Swine Centre by admin on January 1, 2007 | No Comments

It is a significant challenge to suggest how a Canadian pork producer in today’s economic environment can turn a loss into a profit. It is the intent of this paper to reinforce production practices backed by research and actual commercial practice to produce savings up to approximately $15 per hog for some farms. The focus of this paper is to look at the cost areas with the greatest potential for payback for the efforts invested. Feed, wages & benefits, and utilities & fuel account for nearly 70% of all expenditures in 2007 for a typical farm in western Canada. In order to minimize feed costs you must define the objectives of the feeding program to make it possible to select ingredients and a diet formulation that will minimize operational losses, as well you must ensure that the particle size stays within the 650-700 micron range. Utilities are the third largest expense in pork production after feed and labour. Today’s electricity prices are three times what they were in 2003. The utility costs can be cut down by limiting the use of heat lamps and move to heat mats, change from incandescent to T-8 fluorescent bulbs, reduce amount of light in nursery and grow finish rooms, and replace fans with energy efficient ones. Also you must ensure that the ventilation system in the barn is working properly. Conserving water is another way to reduce costs. Wasted water ends up as slurry and increases the cost of manure handling. There are opportunities for savings on every farm in Canada. Finding these savings takes a methodical and careful process of comparing targets to what is actually being achieved. These savings do not exist on all farms but some of these exist on all farms and in order to save money you must find and correct these problems. See the survival checklist at the end of this paper.

Flaxseed Meal in Swine Rations: Growth Performance and Carcass Fatty Acid Profile

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Flaxseed meal is a by-product of the flaxseed crushing industry. There has been a growing interest in the use of flaxseed and its related products such as FSM within the swine industry. Flaxseed is the richest plant-based source of ALA, which has been implicated in having many potential health benefits. The primary goal for use of flaxseed and its by-products within the animal industry is to create a product enriched with omega-3 fatty acids. This experiment used a total of 200 pigs from 32kg initial weight through to market (115kg). Pigs were randomly assigned to one of four dietary treatments containing 0, 5, 10 or 15% FSM included at the expense of barley and soybean meal. It was concluded that the inclusion of up to 15% flaxseed meal (FSM) in the diets of growing and finishing pigs did not have any detrimental effects on overall growth performance, feed intake or feed conversion. Pigs fed diets containing FSM had increased levels of the omega-3 fatty acid á-linolenic acid (ALA) in both their backfat and loins. This may provide producers with an opportunity to sell their pork to specialized markets, and possibly attract a premium price for their product.

Sow Management and Housing What Does the Industry Think?

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Maintaining research facilities that have the capability to meet industry needs is at the core of Prairie Swine Centre’s mandate to serve the industry with near-market research information. A significant effort by Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food to replace the ageing 1980 barns was developed with the Federal government and the result is a shared federal/provincial grant for the renovation of the gestation, breeding and farrowing facilities. The current facility will be challenged to meet the current standards of animal care expected of a research farm and the construction of the new barn will actually reduce the operating costs of the farm through improvements in energy efficiency. Labour is also reduced because all animals will be within the same building instead of being spread over 4 separate buildings and they will be automatically fed instead of hand fed. Sow management is an area of immediate concern to all pork producers who are considering what if any changes they will make to their operations in light of the announcements regarding group-housed gestating sows. In general, the industry is well aware of changes in attitude taking place within the public, the media and special interest groups regarding animal welfare in the barn. There is concern that in fact the housing and management options proposed to replace gestation stalls provide questionable welfare improvements for the animals and at the same time are considered ‘animal friendly’ by people outside the industry because the housing systems allow animals to live in groups. To address these and other research needs the new barn is being designed to accommodate studying the effect of key components of sow management, particularly those that have to do with gestation sow management and housing such as space allowance, group size and feeding. Each of these will be critical factors in developing any renovation that pork producers may wish to pursue in developing a system that ensures low cost productivity as well as embracing a group housing component.

Large Group Housing – Learning From Experience

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Conventional management of grow/finish pigs until recently has been to keep one or two litters in each pen in order to minimize aggression. In recent years producers have moved to sorting pigs by sex (for split sex feeding) or weight (in an unsuccessful attempt to reduce variation at marketing). However small group sizes are still retained, usually limited by the number of pigs that could be fed from a 2-4 hole feeder. With larger operations, or those that practice batch farrowing, producers are now able to form groups of several hundred pigs of similar age and gender. Advantages with larger operations are that less penning is used and the need for alleys within the room is eliminated, thus reducing some aspect of capital cost. More importantly, large groups allow us to apply new technology, particularly when it comes to sorting animals not only for market but also for phase feeding programs within each group. There is the potential for handling to be improved through the use of facilities designed for large groups, and anecdotal evidence would suggest that pigs from large groups handle and load better at marketing. However, a number of producers who have adopted large groups, particularly those using auto-sort technology, have experienced unsatisfactory results. This is common whenever new technology is tried, and solutions need to be found to the problems they are experiencing. Most of the concerns about large group sizes in the past were related to the behaviour and stability of the social structure within groups. As group size increased, social problems increased, and many producers feared that aggression, productivity, and general health of the pigs would deteriorate. This was true to a certain point, but research indicates that the nature of the social structure among animals changes in very large groups. Studies have found that aggression following regrouping is similar, when expressed as minutes per pig, in conventional groups of 10-20 and large groups of over 100. Studies have also examined how readily pigs could move into small and large groups. When pigs were added to a small group there was more fighting than when pigs were added to a large group. Large groups also make the use of auto-sort technology affordable. In such a system pigs are required to pass through a scale that directs them into different areas based on their weight. The scales are usually set up so that pigs pass through them on the way to the feeder. However, most problems associated with auto-sort systems involve pigs refusing to pass through the scale or reluctance to do it several times a day. There are two basic approaches to ‘teaching’ pigs to pass through the sorter. The first approach is to force them through to ensure that all animals have passed through the scale to the food court. The second approach involves ‘shaping’ the pigs behaviour, from that of eating in an open pen to being willing to walk through the scale to obtain feed. Some producers allow their pigs to have ready access the food court at all times with the exception of a weekly managed sort. During this time the animals are gradually moved through the scale and sorted into appropriate weight groups for the following week. The pigs are never required to move through the sorter on their own. We are still at an early stage in developing all of the management criteria for these systems, and so it is better to err on the side of the pig rather than attempting to save on equipment and space. Managing grow-finish pigs in large groups has a great deal of potential, particularly if auto-sorters are used to manage a multi-phase feeding program. Producers choosing to adopt large groups for grow-finish pigs should demand a high level of service from their suppliers, and watch for the results of recent research in the producer press.

Impact of piglet birth weight and birth order on growth and the variability in growth

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Sow herd productivity has a major impact on the overall profitability of pork production and Canadian producers have been successful in their efforts over the past several years to increase average litter size. It is well known that piglets born into larger litters are on average smaller. This article examines the relationship of litter size on birth weight and growth, as well as the variability in growth. Data was collected from about 100 farrowings. At birth, the piglets were divided into litter size and also one of 4 birth weight quartiles, 0.80-1.20kg, 1.25-1.45kg, 1.5-1.7kg, and 1.75-2.5kg. Piglets weighing less than 800 grams at birth were excluded from the experiment. It was determined that the light birth weight piglets never completely catch up. While increasing litter size resulted in a decreased mean birth weight by 5 wks post-weaning, the average body weight was similar among litter sizes. The data does not support the hypothesis that larger litters result in more within litter variation. Larger litters were no more variable than small litters and larger litters resulted in more pork produced per sow.

Water Requirements for Swine

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Constipated Barns: Where Has All of the Space Gone?

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Throughout North America we are experiencing a shortage of nursery and finisher space. The industry has expanded, and we have export markets to take our extra pork, but shortages of capital and environmental restrictions have limited our ability to meet the demand for new buildings. However, even well designed facilities of only a decade ago are finding themselves short on space as pigs back up in these ‘constipated’ barns. Why do we have this shortage of space? How can barns that accommodated the farm’s pigs when they were built find themselves inadequate today? There are at least three contributing factors, each of which adds to the problems created by the others. Increased sow productivity, increased days to market, and increased pig size; have all led to an increase in space needs by 13.8, 12.5 and 10.4%, respectively over the last decade. But what is the overall effect? If we were building a barn to accommodate the production of this unit how much more space would we need? The previous barn had 16 finishing rooms, each of which accommodated 253 pigs, at a floor space allowance of 0.67 m2. That resulted in 2,712 m2 of pig space in the finisher barn (excluding alleys etc.). Building today we would need 18 finishing rooms, accommodating 288 pigs, with a space allowance of 0.74 m2/pig. The total finishing pig area would be 3,836 m2. The combined effect of the three factors identified would be to increase finishing space requirements by 41.4%. Building more finishing space is an obvious means to correct the problem, but how would you do it? Adding two new rooms would address the issue of two extra weeks to market, but the existing rooms would remain overcrowded due to number of pigs and increased pig size. A change in pig flow is needed to accommodate the new standards of productivity the farm is achieving. I was recently asked to look at the plans for a new farrow-to-finish operation. Although productivity in the herd was about what I have described for our example barn, the producer had designed the barn to accommodate 30 pigs/sow/year and market weights of 140 kg. That decision will likely be best appreciated in 15 years time. Our example also shows that typical farrow-to-finish barns, with weekly finishing rooms, are not very flexible when it comes to coping with increased sow productivity or market weights. Alternative, more flexible pig flows, should be considered when setting up a new operation.

Assessment of a biological treatment process to reduce gaseous emissions from swine manure

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A recent survey conducted by PSCI showed that 83% of barn workers may be exposed to potentially hazardous levels of gases, especially hydrogen sulphide (H2S), generated during in-barn manure handling tasks. A biological treatment approach developed for the containment of hydrogen sulphide (H2S) in oil reservoirs has been shown to reduce the emission of H2S from swine manure. The combined application of metabolic inhibitors such as nitrite and molybdate tended to reduce the odour concentration from gas samples in semi-pilot scale tests, but the impact on ammonia levels was not evident during the length of the treatment test considered. Preliminary work on isolation and enrichment of sulphide-oxidizing bacteria from manure showed promising results, but further study is needed to verify the possibility of enriching a sulphide-oxidizing culture from swine manure and to assess the activity of the enriched culture in reducing the emission of sulphides from manure slurries. An on-going study is currently underway to examine various factors affecting the microbial culture aspects of this treatment approach and to implement the treatment in controlled room-scale tests in the barn. It is anticipated that further development and successful application of this treatment process in swine barns will reduce worker exposure to potential gaseous hazards (especially hydrogen sulphide) and improve the overall work environment in swine barns, thereby leading to better health and productivity of workers and animals.

Impact of Large Litters on Performance and Carcass Quality

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Digestible and net energy content of peas in weaned pigs, growing pigs and gestating sows

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Peas have become an essential feed ingredient in swine production, thanks to their high content in lysine and their good digestible (DE) and net energy (NE) content in pigs. The digestible energy (DE) content of pea varieties grown in the Prairies in 2005 and 2006 was measured in growing pigs (25 and 50 kg) and in gestating sows (200 kg). Based on the DE content and the chemical composition of the peas, the net energy (NE) content of the latter was also estimated. The DE contents ranged from 3232 to 4555 kcal DE/kg DM in growing pigs and from 3441 to 4052 kcal DE/kg DM in sows. The DE content was, on average, 208 kcal DE/kg DM higher in 50kg-pigs, as compared to the 20kg ones. No marked difference was observed between growing pigs and sows. The NE content was, on average, 69% that of DE. Peas grown in different conditions present different chemical compositions and DE contents. However, no relationship could be established between composition and energy content. On the other hand, the results confirm that large pigs better digest peas than weaned pigs and that it makes sense to consider different energy contents for weaned pigs and larger pigs.