For 2026, the terminology around “summer marketing” has a slightly different context. Normally, the crush sheets indicate that those few summer months might be the only months of the calendar year that offer a market profit opportunity. However, for 2026, depending on individual production costs, all months have had and continue to have this potential. While all swine operations implement diets and management strategies with the end in mind, 2026 should bring even a sharper pencil to maximize this opportunity.
Real time decision-making economic tools discussed below for stocking rate influence on growth rate, DDGS inclusion recommendations, ideal net energy and amino acid inclusion (lysine and tryptophan), optimal diet phosphorus levels and feed additives use such as Skycis, among other tools are available here.
Try These Post-Weaning Practices
For the first three to four weeks post-weaning, there is a limited opportunity to accelerate growth rate to have a measurable impact on final market weight. In many cases, more time and investment should be devoted to ensuring pigs are started correctly, with properly sanitized facilities, accurate implementation of SOPs for newly placed pigs, proper ventilation and timely treatment of challenged pigs to ensure they are set up for the remainder of their growth stage to market. However, nursery nutritional programs that include in-feed acids, pharmacological zinc, super-dose phytase and other feed and water additives, with consistent data, can increase final body weight by 0.4 to 1.5 lb. at the end of this period.
Late Nursery to Marketing Tips
Once post-wean pigs are about 28 days post-weaned, they often respond to various nutritional practices to increase growth rates that are sustainable until marketing. These practices include increased dietary energy intake and use of growth promoters (some already mentioned in the post-wean section), such as pharmacological copper, ionophores and other feed additives. Some nutritionists formulate dietary phosphorus and various amino acids, such as tryptophan, at slightly higher concentrations to achieve higher growth rate targets.
A commonly used practice is to reduce or eliminate higher-fiber ingredients, such as distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS) or wheat middlings, to increase growth. This also allows for increased dietary soybean meal, which can improve growth rates if currently included at low diet concentrations.
The use of added fat is a decades old practice that always gets discussed, but often the resulting improvements are only in the 1.0-2.0 lb. carcass weight basis, but the added feed cost in many U.S. locations can still be greater than the revenue received.
While nutrition is a piece of maximizing profitability in high market price months, management practices can often override nutrition changes for extra weight gain. Practices to increase days to market could include:
- Double stocking nursery pigs longer for fall-marketed pigs to allow for more days on feed of finishing pigs during the summer months.
- Utilizing a lower stock rate for targets periods of time as possible as a means to improve daily gain.
- Altering marketing strategies to maximize days of feed of an entire barn population.
