In the second State of the Pork Industry Report, Farm Journal’s PORK editor Jennifer Shike joins Cara Haden, DVM and veterinarian with Pipestone; Randy Kuker, director of swine production for The Equity; Adam Annegers, sow production manager at JBS; and Brad Eckberg, business analyst with MetaFarms, to compare Q2 2024 sow and grow-finish performance data (obtained April 1 to June 30) to what the experts are seeing in the barns.
Watch or listen to their entire discussion on YouTube. These experts share takeaways from Q2 and how understanding percentiles can help your farm be more profitable now and in the future.
“I don’t like to be average,” Eckberg points out. “I think a lot of producers don’t want to be average. The pork industry is a very competitive business. We’re always striving to improve. Looking at average doesn’t tell the whole story.”
For example, in the Q2 data, the average pigs weaned per mated female per year was 26.8. The Top 10% was 31.3 and the bottom 10% was 20.1.
“The top 10% really gives you the genetic potential of the animals that you’re working with,” Annegers says. “If you just compare yourself to the average all the time, and you’re in the bottom 10%, you’re really not that far away. It’s like, ‘we could be better, but we’re fairly close.’ But when you compare that bottom 10% to the top 10%, there’s such a wide range there. It’s like, ‘whoa, guys, we’ve got the same genetics, very similar facilities, what is that top 10% doing that the bottom 10% is not?’ Most of the time what we find out is the percent of execution. We have an amazing protocol book. Those farms that really execute that and are bought into that protocol, those farms are normally towards the top 10%.”
Here are a few other points the experts discussed:
Total born average was 15.6 pigs – up 2 pigs from 2015.
“Increased numbers are a good thing for sustainability, but it is a huge challenge. In general, the more pigs that we get, the more we struggle with weights. That means it’s going to be harder to lower pre-wean mortality. Also, there’s only a certain amount of colostrum in every sow. When that colostrum gets spread between 20 piglets instead of 16, that’s just different and we need to be able to manage that appropriately or we’re not going to have appropriate health in those pigs. I think increase total born is a great thing, but it does pose more challenges for our caregivers in caring for those pigs.” – Cara Haden, DVM, Pipestone
Finishing weights averaged 285.5 lb., an increase of 2.8 lb. from a year ago. Ten years ago, finishing weights averaged 279.8 lb.
“We’ve tried different tactics like turning off water cups to get better feed efficiency during certain times of the year. We don’t do it in the summertime when there’s high heat and we’re trying to drive water intake. But we’ve done some different things to drive average daily gain and to drive those numbers to be more efficient to put more pounds on those pigs. We’ve had some pretty good success stories doing that. With the better markets we’ve got this summer, our customers want to drive pounds to the packer and take advantage of those weights now. I foresee in the next couple months we’ll start backing off on that a little bit and move back towards normal ranges here in the next two to three months.” – Randy Kuker, The Equity
Q2 2024 finishing average daily gain averaged 2.02 lbs, a minimal increase from the same period last year but a 7.4% increase from 2015.
“When we talk about welfare and growth, you can have very similar facilities that perform very, very differently. The only difference is the caregiver. I think from an average daily gain standpoint, the best caregivers are going in and assessing the environment and making changes to make sure that the pigs are comfortable so they’re going to the feeders all the time, they are checking feed and water and making sure that feeder settings are appropriate so pigs can get the feed when they want to, and they are getting right on top of treatments in a timely manner. All of those things that are so dependent on caregivers can have huge impacts on things like average daily gain.” – Cara Haden, DVM, Pipestone
In addition, the panelists explore a variety of topics from rubber flooring to euthanized mortality and from scoring systems to reactive caregivers. Check out the second State of the Pork Industry Report hosted by Farm Journal’s PORK on YouTube.
