Economics

Causes of variation in pig production are many and not well understood. One of the key issues arises from the spread in pig weights which begins through a kind of competitive process among the pigs beginning well before birth. Competition in the uterus and during lactation results in a sometimes widely spread distribution of potential in pigs by the time they reach weaning. Some common management procedures are implemented beginning at birth to attempt to reduce variation but their outcome is often marginal, while others, such as processing and castration introduce new challenges to subsets of pigs. Pigs of different weights require different environmental temperatures, feed types and other conditions, yet as variation increases, "average" conditions are provided which probably miss the ideal environment for all but a very small number of pigs.

Some producers are experimenting with simply euthanizing the smallest pigs either at weaning or prior to weaning. An arbitrary percentage is chosen, such as the smallest 3-5% as candidates for euthanizing. Recently published trials (Wolff, Lehe, Keffaber and Deen, "A Producer's Tool for Measuring Attrition", IPVS, 2006) suggest that the weight of the pig, relative to its cohort at both weaning and the end of nursery phase are sentinel indicators of eventual final quality with the weight at the end of the nursery phase a stronger predictor. The result was obtained with all other things held constant so it isn’t clear if targeted or more intensive individual interventions aimed at the smallest pigs at weaning and feeder pig stages would affect the outcome.

SwineCast 0214 Show Notes:

• CircoVirus impact on marketings with Paragon's Steve Meyer
• Klaas Okkinga of Boehringer Ingelheim shares on the development of Ingelvac CircoFLEX vaccine
• New, clear, edible, packaging technology
• Country Of Origin Labeling from north of the border
• National Pork Board hosts panel on Pig Crop Report

Variation is a natural part of biological systems and a characteristic that cannot be eliminated. However, the wise producer will institute procedures from the boar stud to the final loading of the finished animals which at a minimum, does not increase the natural variation in growth. Variation costs money, lots of it. Since we adopted systems which produce weekly lots of pigs, the pigs flow through the farm in age-segregated groups, often moving two or three times to different locations. When their growth performance begins to spread, the time and the cost associated with their completion and marketing begins to rise.

So we are talking about not adding to the fundamental problems which biological production systems deal out just because of their nature. Some of those problems include seasonality, the complexity of growth mechanisms as a key variance enhancer (compared to non-biological production—like automobile manufacture etc.) and the fixed periods of production which cannot be speeded up with an extra shift (like gestation). I’m contending that the next major movement forward in competitiveness is the producer’s ability to manage (certainly never eliminate!) variation more effectively. There is lots of money on that table.

Dr. Dennis DiPietre, economist, provides an outlook on production costs and how producers can prioritize various input costs in order to maintain profit levels.

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