Fine Tuning Your Operation When Times Are Tight

Posted in: Nutrition, Pork Insight Articles, Prairie Swine Centre, Press Releases by admin on October 5, 2012

Any time is a good time to review management practices within your operation.  In the current environment of high feed prices and tight margins producers are more aggressively seeking ways to reduce costs and increase revenue.  Prairie Swine Centre’s research program focuses on ways to enhance the economic position of pork producers throughout Canada.  The following list are some, easy-to-adopt ideas, that can be incorporated into your operation immediately.  Many of these ideas may be already implemented in your operation – in that case it serves as a reminder as to the importance of each aspect.

1. Adding peas to the diets at 60% inclusion
   1. Work at Prairie Swine Centre has shown a high inclusion (60%) of peas does not necessarily result in reduced feed intake.  At current market conditions, every $10/mt reduction in finishing diets will save approximately $1.20 per market hog.  A bi-weekly publication (Feed Pea Benchmark) produced by Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba Pulse Growers provides a quick summary on what the price of peas needs to be in order to price into diets.
2. Monitor Temperature
   1. Elevated barn  temperatures reduce feed intake and thus growth rate. For every 1°C above the pig’s thermoneutral zone, feed intake drops by 1-2% and growth rate drops by about 3%. Thus, for every °C above the pigs thermoneutral zone, net income is reduced by $0.50 to $0.75 per pig.
   2. Reduced nocturnal temperature.  Reducing the setpoint temperature by 6°C during hot weather, the barn becomes cooler at night, with somewhat shorter duration of high temperatures. The net result was an increase in growth rate of 2-5%, equal to 2 to 5 fewer days to market; this is valued at $0.50 to $1.00 per pig sold.
   3. The past three winters PSC has been challenging our lower setpoint temperatures in all rooms by reducing setpoints1-2^oC lower than published values.  The result is lower utility costs and no change in productivity (7% or more reduction in utility costs).
3. Properly adjusted water nipples and flow rates
   1. By adjusting nipple drinker height, water wastage can be reduced by up to 20% for grower/finisher pigs. High flow rate can result in more water spillage from nipple drinkers.
   2. Nipple drinkers should be adjusted to 5cm higher than the smallest pig in the pen.  Having the drinker adjusted to a lower  setting will result in additional 10% water wastage in grower and 20% in finisher.
   3. Water wastage increased by 7% with a higher water flow rate of 1,000 ml/min compared to 500 ml/min.
4. Properly adjusted feeders

• A 5% feed wastage at the present time costs the pork producer more than $2 per pig sold. It may be impossible to eliminate feed wastage, but research at Prairie Swine Centre has shown that with most commercial feeders, wastage of 3% or less is not an unreasonable expectation.  Research has shown that having a feeder adjusted to achieve 40% pan coverage will have the optimal combination of reducing feed wastage and maximizing pig performance.

6. Energy levels in finishing diets
   1. Under typical market conditions, high energy diets do not necessarily result in the highest return over feed cost.  Feed efficiency is improved with higher energy diets, however  additional diet costs far exceed the beneficial impact of feed efficiency.  Cost savings range from $3-$5.00 per hog under current market conditions.
7. Review your ideal shipping core
   1. This requires monitoring feed intake and growth as pigs approach market weight and comparing this to the changes in yield and index as market weights increase. In this way, determine the cost of adding an extra kilogram to the market weight, and compare that cost to the added income.
   2. With a finishing diet costing $0.25 per kilogram, and a feed conversion at of 4.0:1, it costs $1.00 to add 1 kg to the live weight. Assuming a dressing percentage of 80% and an index of 109, the price of pigs must be at least $1.15 per ckg to break even on added market weight.
       
8. Power washing and sprinkling
   1. Recent work at Prairie Swine Centre indicates soaking prior to pressure-washing a fully-slatted production room may not be necessary.  Additional labour costs associated without sprinkling are offset by lower water (including well pumping) costs.
   2. Conventional  pressure washer nozzles have been shown to be the most efficient in terms of labour requirements and total water used.  They have been shown to save up to $50 per hog marketed when compared to other nozzle types.
       
9. Check particle size
   1. Once the diet has been formulated there are still opportunities to reduce costs by observing particle size stays within the 650-700 micron range to ensure optimum digestibility. Frequently, due to screen wear, improper screen size or hammer wear, the feeds milled on farm are significantly over the 700-micron threshold.  For every 100 microns under 700 the feed conversion improves 1.2%. With feed costs today of $110 per finished hog, moving from say a 3.0 F/G to a 2.96 F/G (the effect of 1.2% improvement, or 100 micron reduction in feed particle size) is worth $1.30 per pig marketed.

While this is not an exhaustive list, it’s meant to take a quick look at your operation and potentially find a couple of hidden dollars, or perhaps re-enforce why we do certain things.  If you are looking for more information there is a wide array of resources available at www.prairieswine.com – or if you have other ideas to save costs don’t hesitate to any one of the Research Scientists at Prairie Swine Centre.

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