Hog Inventory Management: Holding Diets are Back on the Table
Backed-up pork processing plants. Holding diets. The waiting game. If anything good came out of the COVID-19 pandemic and it’s initial impact on the pork supply chain, Randy Francois, an eastern Iowa pig farmer, said it was hog inventory management.
“We learned how to manage hogs, manage weights,” Francois told AgriTalk’s Chip Flory during the Farmer Forum on Jan. 19. “We learned how to make plans around how we're going to move animals around.”
Backed-Up Plants
At the beginning of the year, Francois got a warning from a packer that things might get a little slow. Between snowstorms, seasonal health challenges, COVID-19 cases on the rise and holiday breaks, he said it’s been hard to get a full work shift through every plant.
Enter in Plan B and Plan C.
“We’ve made some different plans and options as to how we're going to move pigs if challenges arise. We're right in the middle of that plan right now. And like I said, at least we've been through this scenario, and we're not all going through this blindly,” he said.
That’s a positive that came from a negative.
Meanwhile the same story was happening across the river in Illinois. Chad Leman, a central Illinois pig farmer, told Flory he could pretty well echo what Francois just said.
“We're definitely backing up pigs again over the course of the last few weeks,” Leman said. “The dreaded phrase holding diets, which we talked about a year and a half ago, is back.”
He has several groups on holding diets again, anticipating more backed-up plants.
“Last week, we had a load of pigs on the road and the packer called early in the morning and said, ‘Tell your driver, just hold off. We don't think we can take them.’ But you just can't pull off with a load of pigs for too long. That's sort of the world we're in right now – plants are waiting to see who shows up for work every day and then they'll adjust on the kill capacity.”
Francois said being able to start pigs on holding diets four or five weeks sooner than they did the last time around will help. But it’s still hard to overcome the higher use of corn when it costs so much more.
“Since we've been through it before we are able to plan ahead,” Leman added. “So, if you’ve got a group of pigs approaching 250-260 pounds, you're already holding them back rather than waiting until they're 300. I think both of our buyers last week told us that their average weights for the week were in the 315- 320 range. That’s getting awful big to be sending these pigs to town. Right now, you're better off sending a 270-pound pig to town than you are a 305-pound pig, given feed prices.”
Is an End in Sight?
Hopefully. But Francois said it’s shining the light on the need for more automation in plants. He believes plants will catch up, but it’s going to take some time.
“We've done automation steps on our farm to approach the labor shortages,” Francois said. “We've made modifications in our feed mill process to help alleviate some of the labor every day, which has greatly increased our production, productivity and allowed us to put our minds toward other focuses.”
Leman agreed that feed mills are one area where the industry could really streamline things. Another advantage of technology is the ability to “adjust diets almost on the go” with the fluctuation seen in in feed prices over the course of the last year, he said.
Miles Apart, But Same Challenges
Although Leman and Francois live miles apart and have different-sized operations, the challenges they are facing mirror each other to a tee, Francois noted.
“It is remarkable to hear that we’re facing the same challenges and it is reassuring to me that we're on the right page because Chad's a great operator and has a great operation,” Francois said. “I feel we're both making good efforts. It shows the success of the pig industry. We've really come together with a strong industry, and we really raise a good product for our consumer.”
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