I’ve had 2 contacts this morning asking about soybean meal availability and options for diets in late September and early October. If you haven’t been paying attention, the ‘trade’ fears that the upper Midwest will run out of soybeans (and … Continue reading →

Sale weights for the first 3 weeks of August typically are 96.8% of early January sale weights in the Iowa-Southern Minnesota market. When I average the Iowa-Southern Minnesota weekly live weight at slaughter data (www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/NW_LS720.txt) for the past ten years, … Continue reading →

The most popular topic for me this summer and fall at producer meetings is managing propane expense in swine facilities. When combined with the supply side concerns, producers have taken on a new awareness of how heating systems work in … Continue reading →

It is late Friday afternoon as I write this weeks blog. In the past 2 weeks I’ve been on a number of farms for several clients reviewing ventilation systems along with feeder and drinker needs for wean-finish flows. Once again … Continue reading →

I belong to a lot of international pig information sites. One that I use quite a bit (and have even written articles for) is www.pig333.com. This site is headquartered in Spain and lets me see the European perspective (with an … Continue reading →

While it is the middle of July, now is the time to think about next winter’s propane needs. For those of us in the upper Midwest, thoughts of last winter’s spike in spot prices to over $5 per gallon along … Continue reading →

Yesterday I was at a production site working with production supervisors for a production system. While they spend every working day in production facilities directing the care of pigs and making individual pig marketing decisions, the supervisors really had not … Continue reading →

This past week I’ve been reviewing pig inventories as reported in both the Jun 1 USDA Hogs and Pigs report and the 2012 USDA Census of Ag. As readers of this blog well know, prices on the Chicago board have … Continue reading →

While many of us involved in pork production have a general idea of current prices and we generally pay attention to the Chicago Futures prices, I thought I would put current prices in laymans terms so we really appreciate today’s … Continue reading →

I’m writing this week’s blog ahead of the Hogs and Pigs Report, the planted acres report and the quarterly grain stocks report. All of these have big implications for producers as they make marketing and production decisions. At the same … Continue reading →