It was great seeing so many readers of this blog at World Pork Expo last week. Many of you stopped me to comment on my last posting about taking time for a vacation. As you know, I did that prior … Continue reading →

It’s only 2 weeks until World Pork Expo in Des Moines. I plan on attending on Wednesday and Thursday and will be talking with many of the readers of this blog. The Expo is as much about the people attending … Continue reading →

I’m often asked for checklists that can help employees and barn owners keep up on the little things that make a ventilation system successful in meeting the moisture and heat removal goals that the system was designed for. I ran … Continue reading →

This weekend I drove from Mankato to eastern South Dakota. Lots of planters in the field and it appears that a majority of the corn in southern Minnesota is in the ground. It’s been wetter in eastern South Dakota so … Continue reading →

A few weeks ago I reviewed the MetaFarms 2016 wean-finish growth data. Today I want to take a look at MetaFarms comparison of Canadian vs US sow herd productivity for 2016. The MetaFarms sow performance data for 2016 is based … Continue reading →

This weekend marks 4 months since medically important antibiotics could only be added to swine diets with a VFD (Veterinary Feed Directive). The past 2 days I was at a national sales meeting for a nutrition supplier to the US … Continue reading →

When wean-finish technology first hit the US industry in the mid-late 1990’s, many estimates of production cost versus traditional nursery moved to finisher suggested fewer hours of labor per pig for wean-finish. Earlier this week I was asked if there … Continue reading →

This past weekend MetaFarms released their performance summaries for the 2016 production year. For those unfamiliar with MetaFarms, this a private production record company based in Burnsville, MN. Data in their system comes from production facilities in the United States … Continue reading →

It has been a couple of weeks since I’ve sat down and posted an item on my blog. After a very hectic February and March doing site visits and producer meetings I took some time off. I spent some of … Continue reading →

I’ve spent this week doing producer meetings along with 2 site visits in Iowa. I got to see lots of tractors pulling anhydrous rigs along I80 in eastern Iowa and even saw some manure being applied. Spring is here (at … Continue reading →