The combined March 1 and April 1 breeding herd inventory for US and Canadian producers stood at 7.394 million pigs, 96.3% of the 2008 number for the same period. Because so much of our profitability is now tied to … Continue reading
Yearly Archives: 2009
Type A-H1N1 flu and weaned pigs
Hysteria is the best word I can think of for what happened to hog prices this week when consumers around the world mistakenly associated pork production with the Type A-H1N1 virus. This morning there was a report from Los Angles … Continue reading
Canadian Inventories and Swine Flu
Yesterday, April 28, USDA and Statistics Canada released the April 1 Canadian inventories of hogs and pigs, and the combined March 1 US and April 1 Canadian herd numbers. On April 1, there were 1,359,200 head in the Canadian … Continue reading
What about summer heat relief for pigs
As I write this week’s blog, the air temperature is 42 F with wind gusts from the NW up to 30 mph. However, by this weekend temperatures in the Mankato, MN area are predicted to be in the upper 70’s. … Continue reading
Ventilation controllers
This is the time of the year when ventilation systems in swine facilities are cycling thru many stages. The cycling of the various fan and curtain stages is totally dependent on how the controller(s) is set, and the location of … Continue reading
Who’s at risk?
In the past 2 weeks I’ve spoken at 6 different producer meetings in Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota. At every meeting one of the topics of conversation around the refreshment table was ‘when will prices improve’. As readers of … Continue reading
Random thoughts
This week’s blog won’t be limited to a single theme – instead I want to visit about a variety of topics that I’ve come across in producer contacts this past week. Let’s begin with the topic of added fat … Continue reading
New products and vaccines
In the past 2 weeks I’ve been to 2 professional meetings. After attending the American Society of Animal Science Midwest Section meetings in Des Moines and the American Association of Swine Veterinarians meetings in Dallas, Texas, I’m full of enthusiasm … Continue reading
Is the pain bad enough?
Many of you have noted that I didn’t write a blog last week. I was attending the annual meeting of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians in Dallas, Texas and conducting a ventilation workshop. Probably the most common topic of … Continue reading
Who is quitting?
In the past 6 weeks, I have been a speaker at pork producer trade shows in Minnesota, Iowa, Virginia, Ohio and Nebraska. At all of these shows, a common thread of discussion was prices, both for feed grains as input … Continue reading