Better Pork - August 2006Yorkshire farmer gets as many as 40 piglets
per sow with multi-fosteringChinese bloodlines blended with high production Landrace have given Ian Broumpton an average in the last complete year of 29.31 born alive per sow with 25.46 weaned and sold
by NORMAN DUNN
Some say fostering is too work-intensive in a big hog unit, but Ian Broumpton argues that it’s the key to optimum profit. While the average live-born piglets per sow and year in the British herd is just over 24, this Yorkshire farmer produced 40 born alive over the last year with 11 per cent of his 220-sow herd.
“We’ve always gone for producing lots of hogs per sow,” Broumpton admits. “We’ve had hybrids from a number of breeding companies, but now concentrate on producing from very prolific 16-teat sows -- the so-called ACMC AF1 which is a hybrid derived from crossings with the Chinese Meishan and high production Landrace lines.”
Just how productive these sows are is emphasized by some of Ian’s results. For instance, he has one group of sows averaging 17.5 born alive over the last eight litters. Overall performance for the last complete year from his AC1 herd, which is put to ACMC Pietrain boars, averaged 29.31 born alive per sow with 25.46 weaned and sold.
Dry sows are run in straw yards with automatic feeders. Unlike most European hog breeding enterprises, which nowadays rely on artificial insemination, servicing on this farm starts the natural way -- with a boar. When sows are ready to breed, they’re penned with a boar and the first service is supervised. After that, boar and sow are left all day together, but separated overnight. The boar and sow are then put in together for the following day too, or AI is used then.
“Sometimes you hear talk about fostering not being worth it because of the high work input. My point of view is that the more hogs you can rear, the lower the overheads per hog,” explains Ian. If the litter is too large, the surplus piglets are moved regularly. On the first or second day, the piglets are moved into smaller litter of the same age. Then a few days later onto another, and so on with as many as four or five moves before weaning. Sometimes a sow is kept on after weaning for a few extra weeks of fostering.
“There’s certainly plenty of milk in the sows for this,” Broumpton says. “But when there are not enough sows, we also feed milk replacer to some foster piglets.”BP© copyright 2006 AgMedia Inc..
back A family of top price Pietrains
by NORMAN DUNN
The most expensive boar ever sold in Germany, a Pietrain, has changed hands for the equivalent of $20,800 Cdn at auction. The boar was one of 30 Pietrains sold at the auction earlier this spring, where overall average price was only $2,853 Cdn. The top price boar comes from a sow which has brought a relative bonanza for owner Georg Kügel from the Bavarian town of Pförring.
Over the past 12 months, this pedigree Pietrain breeder has sold seven boars from the same mother, Minka 36260, and grossed $48,900 Cdn with them. Minka is a 400-kilogram three-year-old with conformation and muscling certified as “excellent.” All but one of the boars have been snapped-up by artificial insemination stations in Germany.
The grandsire of Minka was bred from a line of Pietrains imported from the USA.BP
© copyright 2006 AgMedia Inc..
back Genetic fingerprints of Bavarian hogs boost consumer confidence
by NORMAN DUNN
The search for a rock-solid guarantee that only locally-raised hogs supply the pork for certain Bavarian butchers and restaurants has led a group of producers to develop an identification system straight out of the police handbook.Farmers around the town of Markt Nordheim now sell all their hogs with details of each animal’s genetic fingerprint. This means full traceability is now available, even from a sliver of meat shaved off a grilled steak in a restaurant.
Helmut Schmidt is project leader of the new scheme and he emphasizes that there is a real demand from customers wanting a traceability system that goes even further down the consumer chain than the usual ear number tattoo or microchip implant. Scientific support came from the Technical University of Munich and half the development costs was paid by the state Ministry of Agriculture and Germany’s central marketing organization for farm production (CMA). Members of the hog production group paid the rest.
Farmers are now responsible for collecting a small sample of bristles (with roots) from each sow and boar in their respective breeding herds. The sample is bar-coded and sent to a DNA analysis laboratory, where it is typed for 14 genetic markers. Details are entered into a dedicated databank with regular spot checks carried out taking DNA samples from offspring at the slaughterhouse, enabling the tracing of parent stock and thus farm of production.
Each DNA sampling of parent stock costs the equivalent of around $48 Cdn and the farmers aim to retrieve this expenditure and pay for the extra management costs through a premium on the pork equal to eight cents per kilogram of slaughterweight.Full details of feed used in the group’s hog production are also available to consumers and for checking-back should any problems arise with meat at the end of the supply chain. Samples are taken and analyzed from every load of grain or compound feed coming onto the respective farms. The details of the feed are kept along with actual samples of each probe for one year (compounds) and 18 months (grain)BP
© copyright 2006 AgMedia Inc..
back A 17 per cent increase in weight gain with SPF breeding
by NORMAN DUNN
Does buying-in expensive Specific Pathogen Free (SPF) breeding stock really pay for itself on a commercial unit?
A five-year research program into this question run by the Dutch Agricultural University Animal Sciences Group at Lelystad featured a unit restocked with 300 SPF sows.
Performance of the feeding hogs produced over the years has been compared with the average figures from the “Agrovision” nationwide recording service.
Currently, high-health gilts reared from SPF grandparent stock command prices 15 to 20 per cent higher than standard breeding hybrid stock in the Netherlands and Germany. That’s at least $65 Cdn more. But Dutch farm manager Gert van Beek, who ran the SPF trial and has now taken over the unit to produce SPF sows for sale, says results more than make up for the initial expense.“In fact, most people starting a farm or restocking in the Netherlands nowadays would automatically choose SPF stock,” he adds. “Impartial recording shows that the extra investment can be recouped by increased performance in just six months with SPF females in new buildings. Where existing buildings have been restocked with SPF gilts, complete return on investment takes from three to five years.”
Van Beek sells his stock, which are bred from SPF grandparent stock from a nucleus herd in France run by the breeding company Topigs, as free from a range of diseases including PRRS, Aujeszky’s disease, mycoplasma, Streptococcus suis plus ecto and endo parasites. Back to the Lelystad trial results, and the results from this showed that daily liveweight gain during the feeding period for the SPF offspring works out 17.5 per cent better than the national results -- at 896 grams against 762 grams.
Whereas average feeding days to slaughter total 115 in commercial herds throughout the Netherlands, this period covers only 88 days with the SPF hogs. Losses are also pretty low with the SPF animals, at just 0.8 per cent compared with 3.5 per cent -- a health pointer underlined by the vet costs per feeding hog. These averaged the equivalent of $5.50 Cdn for SPF against $9.78 Cdn.
The long-term trial also looked at feed costs per kilogram of growth for SPF offspring. These averaged only $0.78 with SPF hogs but were nine per cent higher at $0.85 in the national recording scheme.BP
Feeding period performance from SPF offspring
300 SPF sows at
LelystadCommercial herd recording scheme (Agrovision)
Daily liveweight gain (g)
896
762
Feeding days to slaughter
88
115
Mortality ( per cent)
0.8
3.5
Feed costs/kg weight gain (Cdn$)
0.78
0.85
Vet costs per feeding hog (Cdn$)
3.38
6.00
Source: Lelystad Institute of Animal Husbandry, Agricultural University of the Netherlands © copyright 2006 AgMedia Inc..
back Robot cleaner a boon to Danish hog workers
by NORMAN DUNN
Here’s a hog house cleaner that doesn’t need pay or health insurance. The working day can last 20 hours, but it never falters, stops for a break or needs a meal. And a particular chore only needs to be demonstrated once and will never be forgotten -- as long as the computer doesn’t crash, at least. Of course, we’re talking about a computer-controlled robot.
It’s been three years since the prototype robotic hog house washers were first announced in Scandinavia and, for the most part, that’s where they’ve stayed. Which is a pity, according to farmers, such as Jutland hog feeder Kristian Kappel, who already run these automatic cleaning systems.Kappel’s robot might be comparatively expensive at about $38,000 Cdn. But by taking-on the dirtiest and most repetitive job on the farm, it has raised staff morale and left the employees much more time to spend concentrating on the most important aspect of his business -- the 16,000 hogs he finishes each year.
At around one metre per minute, the robot moves down a central passage in a chosen barn, cleaning pen walls and slatted floors with high-pressure water applied four times over each area, each time at a different angle. One side is cleaned and then, on the return journey, the pens on the other side are scoured.
Only a few facts for each building have to be keyed in to the robot’s microchip brain -- for instance, the measurements of the barn. The cleaner then has to be manually operated for the first tour of a building. The actions are then stored in its memory and can be activated each time that particular building is cleaned.
Cleaning robots do have their drawbacks, though. Water usage can be high, mainly because clean areas of wall are washed just as thoroughly as the rest, and this means 16 litres per minute is quite common.
There are also dirty corners in some pens that are beyond even the powers of this automat and so human cleaners have to be called in for at least a few minutes’ work. Disinfecting after cleaning is also done manually on the Kappel unit.BP
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