Survival Strategies – When Every Penny Counts

Posted in: Prairie Swine Centre by admin on January 1, 2007

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.

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