The hog industry keeps going through changes and transitions, some good, others better, and some questionable, especially those shifts in market prices and profit and loss statements dictate. There are even some that activists of various stripes convince mainstream pork people to implement.
Paul Meers of Paul Meers Consulting in Smithfield, MO says producers building finishing barns and nurseries back in the new pork era of the early ’90’s set them up to house 1000 head pig barns at, about 8 square feet targeting weekly production of a 2,400 sow barn to produce 1,000 to 1,100 pigs a week. Output has greatly increased.
“The systems are setup for finishing those pigs and they take a week’s production which is now 1250 or 1,300 pigs and end up in that same 1,000 head space,” said Meers. “In the 90’s, producers sold 240 to 250 pound pigs, an ideal weight. Now we have these 1,300 pigs a week and we take them to 280, or 300 and even a little more.”
He says producers continue to expect the same kind of production results even with that kind of overcrowding.
He tells of how a client marked his pigs for the next day’s load in May. The average weight was 306 pounds, and two pigs had to move before one could lay down.
“I mean it is just that crowded,” said Meers. “With barns designed at eight square feet per pig and the pencil pushers would say we need to fill them at three to four per cent over because we will have a three to four per cent death loss to end up with 1,000 finished hogs at a 1,000 pig spaces.
He thinks the industry is hurting itself by having the idea they can still put 1,100 pigs in there, but now they weighing 280 to 300 pounds. In some cases 50 pounds per pig more than what the building was designed to hold.
“If we have 1000 pigs, times 40 pounds more per pig, that is 40,000 pounds of extra pork,” says Meers. “Divide that by 280 pounds per pig and that is another 142 pigs in that facility that it wasn’t designed to hold. The feed efficiency drops, the average daily gain declines, and even the death loss creeps higher.”
The swine consultant recently spoke with a technician friend who spent some time with a major integrator coming through a major PEDv break in 2013. While recovered, he’d shut down a few barns in the meantime. Still making lease payments on those empty barns, this integrator decided to fill those barns at 70 per cent, to get all empty barns into production, albeit not nearly full.
That producer proved to himself give these pigs the right amount of space they will grow even faster and convert even better because average daily gain, feed efficiency and death loss were all significantly improved!
Meers says many barns are down to 6.5 square feet with the added weight and numbers and with the added incentive to getting more pounds to market, some producers simply look the other way.
“My point is re-evaluate whether the producer is using the barn for what he designed it for and how is he stocking his finisher barns,” he says. “For me it was kind of a wakeup call when I listened to the two vets talk about too many pigs and the numbers in many barns had gotten way too high. It is a business where we have to be as efficient as possible.”
Meers is hoping his comments will get some people scratching their heads and  maybe a wake-up call for them to cut back a little or maybe to re-measure the pens.
“Do we have enough feeder space and are the original five hole or six hole feeders in these barns that could allow five pigs up to 250 pounds to eat properly,  but what about six pigs at 300 pounds, “ he says. “They get pretty wide don’t they?”   •
— By Harry Siemens