Better Pork - October 2002How many nursery pigs can eat at one wet/dry feeder space
A recent Belgian study shows that piglets prefer pellets and can eat them faster. It also sheds light on the maximum number of piglets per feeding space, both for pellets and mealby MARTINE LAITAIT and CATE DEWEY
How do you decide whether to use pellets or meal for your nursery pigs? Typically, one diet form is chosen over another because of feeder design, hygiene, cost or storage facilities.Pellets allow you to reduce the food wastage and dust production. Pelleting the diet increases the bulk density of food, making for easier storage in silos and also a decrease in plugging risk. Also pellets decrease the separation of feed ingredients and reduce the free surface of the food exposed to chemical agents. However, additional energy and equipment costs required to produce pellets make them a higher priced feed.
Weaned piglets are able to eat pellets of very variable diameter. Feed consumption is only reduced when the pellets become too hard. To produce high quality pellets, you have to grind more finely than when producing meal. At times, such a fine grinding can impair animal health by inducing gastric ulcers.
Studies comparing the nutritional value of pellets and meal have shown variable results. Sometimes there is no difference between diets and sometimes the performance is better with pellets. To maximize nursery pig performance, water and food intake have to be optimized. But which do piglets actually prefer?
In a recent Belgian study1, weaned piglets (from 7-27 kg body weight) were given both pellets (2.5 mm diameter) and meal of the same formulation (Carnipor, Belgium). The two diets were distributed in two identical feeders with integrated drinkers (Devos, type 2, Zwevezele, Belgium). To avoid preferences based on feeder location, pellets and meal were alternatively given in both the two feeders on three different occasions. The trial also compared two pig densities -- either 30 or 50 pigs per pen.
For all 80 piglets, performance was similar in the two groups: the average daily weight gain was 425 g/day and the feed conversion ratio was 1.72. The pigs preferred pellets, eating twice as much feed in pellet form as in meal form. This difference was most remarkable in pens with 30 pigs rather than 50 pigs. Even though the pig density did not alter the total daily food intakes (710 and 740 g/day), the group of 30 piglets ate 72 per cent of the diet in a pelleted form, compared to 64 per cent for the 50-pig group. Given a choice, perhaps pigs will eat pellets because they are faster to eat.
Pigs ate pellets two times faster than meal. However, the ingestion speed changes with the number of pigs per pen. When the number of pigs in a pen increases, eating speed decreases. The next question then is: how many pigs should we have for each wet/dry feeder space? 2
If we divide the total trough length by the average pig's shoulder width of 16 cm (estimated for the whole post-weaning period), we can determine the number of pigs that can eat simultaneously around the feeder. In the present study, the wet/dry feeders allowed four piglets to eat and two to four piglets to drink at the same time. Piglets spent one hour and 42 minutes per day eating pellets but two hours and 30 minutes eating the meal. These times include an average daily drinking time of about 10 minutes per piglet.
Pigs prefer to eat during the day rather than during the night. Taking this preference into account, we calculated the theoretical number of pigs per wet/dry feeder space. We recommended six pigs per feeding place with meal and 10 piglets per feeding place with pellets.
In our study, when pellets were fed, the growth performance of the pigs was the same whether we had one wet/dry feeding space for eight piglets or one wet/dry feeder space for 13 piglets (that is, 30 and 50 piglets total per feeder). However, there is a negative aspect to the more crowded situation. Pigs prefer to eat during the day but, with 13 pigs per feeder space, pigs had to eat during the night. Actually, for 99 per cent of the 24-hour day, there was at least one pig per feeder.
When there were 13 pigs per feeder space and the pigs were given meal, the average daily feed intake decreased by 100 g and the average daily gain was reduced by 15 per cent. Also the pigs had such difficulty obtaining their required amounts of feed that there was a feeder occupation rate of 140 per cent. This means that there were six pigs eating for only four places!
In conclusion, pigs prefer pellets and can eat them much faster than meal. If feeding meal, the maximum is six pigs per wet/dry feeder space; for pellets, it is 10 pigs per wet/dry feeder space. This will enable all pigs to eat during the day. BP
Martine Laitat is a PhD candidate at the Université de Liège, Faculté de Médecine Vétérinaire, Clinique Porcine, Boulevard de Colonster 20 B42, 4000 Liège. Cate Dewey is a professor in the Department of Population Medicine, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph.
1Laitat M., Vandenheede M., Désiron A., Canart B., Nicks B., Journées Rech. Porcine en France, 2000, 32, 157-162.2Laitat M., Vandenheede M., Désiron A., Canart B., Nicks B., article submitted.
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Japan's labelling rules a foretaste of what is to come in the U.S.
Tougher country-of-origin rules have forced companies such as Maple Leaf Foods to "get down in the counters" and properly identify their productsby DON STONEMAN
The BSE crisis in Japan last fall and winter profoundly changed how Canada, the world's largest single-country exporter of pork, sells into that market.Japan is a "dry run" for how pork might be sold into the United States when country-of-origin labelling rules come into effect in two years.
The BSE crisis started last September, when contaminated meat was found in Japan. It became clear that domestic companies in that country were circumventing country-of-origin rules already in effect and selling imported meat as a product of Japan. The result was an almost immediate toughening of those rules, and matching assurances from suppliers such as Canada that their products were being adequately labelled and properly displayed in the marketplace.
All Canadian packers must have promotional programs and activities if they want to sell pork to the Japanese at the retail level, says Jacques Pomerleau, executive-director, Canada Pork International. (Food service and hospitality services are exempt.) The changes have been most profound, Pomerleau says.
Maple Leaf Foods, for example, no longer counts on trading companies to place their product. Previously "we were selling to importers and distributors and not trying to brand" products, says Ted Bilyea, president of Maple Leaf Foods International. Not only did Maple Leaf launch an effort to "get down in the counters and identify our product," but it is also doing market research for the first time in Japan. In Tokyo and Osaka, consumers are being asked what they are looking for in the products they buy. Meat processed at the Burlington plant is identified by a Maple Leaf brand. Other plants put different brands on their production.
While Bilyea says Maple Leaf has 35 staffers in Japan, the much smaller Quality Meat Packers, based in Toronto, is working with its trading partners in Japan to do the promotion work. There is usually Danish product going into any particular market, says Don Collis, Quality's vice-president and general manager, and either Canadian or American pork will go into that market as well. Collis says the problems in Japan originated because of the "differentials" in price between imported and domestic product. An element in the meat industry "wasn't necessarily complying with the government's desires."
Quality's solution? "You align yourself with organizations with integrity that will present your product in the light that you desire," Collis says. Maple Leaf's Bilyea says the result of Maple Leaf's consumer research will have some effect on the farm. He expects that growers will be given advice as to how to adapt genetics and feed to meet the evolving Japanese market. There are now roughly 450 Ontario pork producers signed on to Maple Leaf's Signature Pork program.
The stringent rules in Japan were brought down virtually overnight, Bilyea says, and the marketing techniques were unconventional. The rule changes were enacted within a month of being drawn up.
There will be much more lead-time as far as U.S. country-of-origin rules are concerned. "It's something that we'd rather not have," Maple Leaf chief executive officer Michael McCain told Better Pork. "But it is a manageable situation."
McCain said Maple Leaf "intends to try to market Canadian pork for the premium value that it deserves" and plans to "grow our production in a methodical, steady fashion." BP
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back Why the North American pork industry is vertically aligning itself
The demand for greater traceability, the incorporation of new technology such as three-site production, plus the need for precise product specifications all lead to a more vertically co-ordinated supply chainby Ken McEwan
Most non-agricultural sectors are in a post-industrial revolution where power comes from information, knowledge and concepts. The swine industry, however, has not reached this stage and is still going through the industrial revolution. In the United States, it is estimated that over 70 per cent of the swine industry has adopted some form of industrialization. As with any change, there are early and late adopters and it is speculated that many of the remaining U.S. producers will struggle to have long-term viability within the hog industry.Typical industrialized techniques for the swine industry include:
- Three-site production (sow, nursery, and finishing all at different locations);
- Ability to construct large sow (2,400 head) units;
- Building finishing barns in multiples of 1,000;
- The use of a common genetics program for the entire sow herd;
- High frequency of artificial insemination;
- The use of a centralized feed manufacturing system that delivers prepared feeds to barns in a 80-100 km radius.
Currently, in the United States, there is a lot of experimentation in terms of industry organization. All of these arrangements have as their end goal the desire to produce the correct type of pork demanded by the consumer, hence lowering the overall operational risk of the production system.
If the poultry industry is used to speculate about future swine industry models, then a highly co-ordinated system is likely where there are no breaks in the information flow between input suppliers, producers, processors and retailers. Producers in this setting have become managers of contracts. It is anticipated that, as the hog industry moves into production to specifications, producers will be faced with lower per unit margins. But the variability in profitability will remain large.
To date, there has been little sharing of information between retailers, processors and producers. Frequently, in many systems there is a break in the information flow and if a niche has been discovered, private business has kept the information to allow for profit maximization.
Vertical co-ordination model. In Figure 1, is a model which helps to illuminate our understanding of why the pork supply chain is vertically aligning itself. The key drivers to vertical co-ordination are technological, regulatory and socio-economic. Technological drivers are those that affect economies of scale and can impact on product characteristics. Technology creates economies of scale from large-scale production/processing units, or allows tighter control over product quality through feeding, housing or management practices. These economies may encourage closer vertical co-ordination and industry consolidation if it is less costly for a processor to do these management functions internally, rather than deal with larger numbers of small producers.
Technology can also have an impact on product perishability and the introduction of new product characteristics, such as lower pH pork.
Regulatory drivers of interest to the swine industry are liability, traceability and product standards and grades. For example, the 1990 Food Safety Act in the United Kingdom increased the legal liability of food firms, causing them to seek more information about upstream production practices in the food supply chain. In 1998, the European Union endorsed plans to extend product liability laws to farmers, who had previously been exempt. The requirement for full traceability of agricultural products in the event of a breakdown in food safety may be a regulatory requirement in itself. In general, as the demand for traceability increases, supply chain relationships will move towards closer vertical relations.
Socio-economic factors can also lead to greater vertical co-ordination. Changes in consumer lifestyles and preferences have increased the demand for branded, further processed meals, including home meal replacements.
Product quality is extremely important and is signalled by a firm's brand name. To differentiate their products, to protect the investment in their brand name and to reduce the monitoring costs of guaranteeing the quality of their inputs, processors prefer closer vertical relations with their suppliers. A wide variety of consumer preferences in international markets encourage product differentiation, moving the sector away from its traditional commodity orientation and encouraging closer vertical co-ordination.
Four product characteristics that lead to greater vertical alignment are product perishability, the amount of product differentiation, the variability and visibility of quality difference, and new characteristics of interest to consumers, such as organic. Product perishability creates uncertainty, adds to the complexity of the transaction and increases the negotiation cost, thus leading to a greater degree of vertical co-ordination. Similar comments can be made regarding product variability and new characteristics to consumers.
The model then looks at transaction characteristics which can be broken down into uncertainty, frequency, asset specificity and complexity. The uncertainty occurs over product quality, reliability of supply, price and just the difficulty in finding a buyer, particularly if the product has unique characteristics. 'Asset specificity' arises when one party has made an investment in a production process specific to one buyer or seller, thereby locking himself into that relationship for a period of time. Transactions involving specific assets leave firms vulnerable to opportunistic behaviour and lend themselves to contracting or vertical integration as the choice of governance structure due to the high monitoring and enforcement costs.
In several regions of North America, including Ontario, any restriction on the ability to decide what genetics to use, what company to purchase feed from, what health status to maintain and what housing system to use, would be viewed as a threat to independent pork production. However, the bundling of farm inputs to provide better traceability and quality assurance, and to allow for branding, can result in increased sales volumes if properly communicated to the consumer (as in the case of Danish pork).
Branding is normally defined as a guarantee that pork was produced in a certain way. While there has been much talk in the United States and Canada about meat traceability and the development of "story" pork, the majority of consumers have not yet demanded this level of information about the meat they consume. Still, using Smithfield Foods as an example, branded fresh pork now accounts for 40 per cent of their fresh pork sales and continues to grow at double-digit rates. The branding occurring in the United States is not simply what feed is used, but rather involves animal welfare, health status, genetics, food safety and value-added, case-ready packaging. It is now known that in the United States 53 per cent of every food dollar is spent away from home and that 10 per cent of all food consumed is eaten in a vehicle.
In conclusion, the model provides a framework to discuss and explain why vertical alignment is occurring in the swine industry.
Increasingly, packer/producer and packer/retailer transaction costs are spiraling upward because of the need for traceability and more defined meat characteristics. Furthermore, the capital investment and asset fixity in pig production, processing and retailing is high, also leading to more vertical co-ordination.
It seems likely that, in future, pork production will be done under tight protocols and that producers, packers and processors will band together to gain economies of scale for accessing inputs, knowledge and to match the scale of the forward player. The development of these food chains will have diversity (producing two or three different meat products) and have the capacity to be global traders. BP
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The family farm remains a hot button issue down south, BUT NOT IN ONTARIO
In the United States, where Tyson Inc. is phasing more than 150 contract hog producers and leased farms out of business, the future of the family farm arouses heated debate. In Ontario, most organizations find little reason to treat family farms differently from othersby DON STONEMAN
Nearly a decade ago, Harold Breimyer, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri-Columbia, published an article entitled "Does the Family Farm Really Matter?" But in Ontario today a better question might be "Does the term 'family farm' really matter?""The concept of the factory farm versus the family farm is really an American phenomenon," says Thorndale pig farmer Bob Bedggood, former president of the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario (CFFO). He thinks the terminology doesn't mean much here in Ontario, certainly not to the CFFO, which bills itself as "a professional organization for family farm entrepreneurs" but has never defined "the family farm" in its policy book.
Bedggood's personal definition of a family farm is an operation where the farmer and his or her family provide most of the labour and make the management decisions that count. "It's not really about size, it's about control. It's who makes the financial judgment and whether he lives on the farm (and) is part of the community."
Harold Breimyer defined a family farmer as one who owns at least part of the land he crops and gets a combined income from land, labour, capital and management, a definition that sounds a lot like Bedggood's vision. That said, organizations in Ontario generally make little attempt to treat family farms differently from non-family farms, though there have been notable exceptions.
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture has found it necessary to define the family farm a couple of times, says current president Jack Wilkinson. The first time was during the early 1980s, when offshore buyers were scooping up large tracts of farmland in Bruce and Huron Counties. The second time was during a spirited debate over caps on safety net programs to ensure that government farm supports did not go to shareholder corporations.
"We still have a cap" on the Net Income Stabilization Account (NISA), says Wilkinson, but there was never a cap put on GRIP or on crop insurance.
The closest that Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) has come to defining a family farm was to put a limit on the amount of quota that any one farmer could own. The limit was quietly removed in the mid-1990s, at the same time as the quota system was revamped, says DFO chairman Gordon Coukell of Stayner. All dairy farm but one in Ontario are family owned, he says; there may be three or four family members in a partnership or in a family corporation. The lone exception is the Shur-Gain Research Farm, south of Woodstock, which is owned by Maple Leaf Foods Ltd.
A cap on broiler chicken quota holdings was removed a few years ago. Broiler board member John Maaskant of Clinton says the cap of 90,000 units (each unit gives the right to produce roughly 1.85 of liveweight birds) was deemed no longer necessary. There were very few with more than 90,000 units, he says, and Maple Leaf Foods Ltd sold all of its production capacity.
"The big corporate entities were getting out of the growing business, says Maaskant. "By and large, we just have family farms and very little corporate investment in chicken production. The trend is towards growth and to let people set up businesses as they want to."
That said, "we are always watching to see if there is a problem," Maaskant says. "We don't want rules unless there is a good reason for them."
Farm Credit Canada offers a "family farm loan," but there really aren't any restrictions on who can use these loans. Sometimes the loans aren't even made to farmers.
In the United States, where a number of organizations tout their devotion to protecting the family farm, the issue of "family farms" continues to be a hot button one. In January, the National Farm Action Coalition sought to block the nomination of Thomas Dorr of Iowa as under-secretary for rural development in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The coalition complained that "Dorr favours North Carolina's factory farm model of hog production and will use his post at the USDA to further the expansion of giant factory farms that pollute the environment, disrupt rural communities and force family farmers off the land." The same group sought to ban packer ownership of livestock in the United States.
In 1993, Breimyer wrote: "The big new hog facilities may have a genuine advantage. But these hog facilities often are subsidized by income tax deductions. It remains to be seen whether they can weather the low-price period of the hog cycle better than family hog farmers can."
The trouble is that when integrators get into trouble, families that farm get hurt. On a Sunday night in mid-August, officials of Tyson Inc. notified 132 contract hog producers in Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma that their barns would be phased out of operation as contracts ended between August and March. As well, 27 company-owned or leased farms will be closed. The Arkansas Pork Producers Association estimated that $100 million of revenue in the state would be lost as a consequence. The Pork Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tyson Foods Inc., was associated with half of the pork industry in the state. The other option is to deal with competitor Cargill which, at press time, hadn't been jumping to fill the gap.
For its part Tyson, which acquired beef and pork packer IBP a year earlier, claims to have been operating its hog division at a loss. The Arkansas producers were located too far from packing plants and transportation costs were hurting profits. Tyson plans to reduce its sow numbers by 30 per cent to 70,000.
With giant integrators in the United States operating in such a heavy handed manner, it's a good bet that the debate over family versus factory farms will continue south of the border for a long time to come.
Pork producer Don Mills of Nairn is gearing up for organic production and also organizing for the National Farmers Union (NFU), which recently applied for status as an official farm organization in Ontario. The NFU strongly supports the family farm and is opposed to contracting.
Mills says Maple Leaf Foods, which processes pork in Brandon, Man., and Burlington, Ont., may be Canadian-owned, but it could be purchased by American interests very quickly. In that case we would be leaving a lot of decisions about the industry to be made "at a desk" somewhere else. BP
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