In the past several weeks I’ve been in quite a few fully slatted finishing facilities that are showing their age. While some of them are 13+ years old, others are only 5-7 years old. I suspect there are a large … Continue reading
The World Pork Expo is in Des Moines on June 6-8. While it is the major equipment and allied industry show for US producers, it is growing in importance to the international production community. Each year sees growth in the … Continue reading
I’m getting quite a few requests for ventilation details on new double-wide tunnel wean-finish or grow-finish facilities. In addition, I’ve reviewed the ventilation system as installed at quite a few sites in recent weeks. Unfortunately, the many builders and facility … Continue reading
On Wednesday the joint US and Canadian quarterly hog inventory report was released by USDA and Statistics Canada. The April 1 Canadian pig inventory was estimated at 12,020,000 pigs with 1,312,000 kept for breeding and 10.708 million kept for market. … Continue reading
Many of us working in the swine industry are aware of the impact of corn prices on our feed costs in a general way. However, we don’t often think about the actual problems local feed mills face in keeping a … Continue reading
Most of us are aware in general terms how large the US pork industry is. In 2011 US packers slaughtered 109,967,000 pigs under federal inspection. This was up from 109,292,000 head in 2010. A couple of weeks ago I came … Continue reading
Pork producers are beginning to act nervous about profit prospects this fall. SEW prices continue to decline, both on the contract and spot market as the Chicago futures continue to gradually decline in value. This past week USDA reported SEW … Continue reading
With both the USDA planting intentions report and the quarterly Hogs and Pigs report released today, an active day for those who follow markets and try and estimate impacts. The corn market responded to the report by ending limit up … Continue reading
This past week I attended the Midwest Section of the American Society of Animal Sciences annual meeting in Des Moines. This meeting is the largest gathering of swine nutritionists in the country. For 2.5 days we heard presentations from a … Continue reading
At the American Association of Swine Veterinarians meeting, Dr Tom Stein presented data on ‘normal’ pig performance based on the closeouts of production systems using the MetaFarms data system. This data represents groups of growing pigs that were closed out … Continue reading