Eyebrows were raised in mid-August when Ontario hog marketings rose to substantially higher levels than normal. In the week ending Aug. 21, Ontario Pork recorded sales of 110,000 market hogs, considerably higher than in previous weeks. What was going on?
Was there an influx of pigs from Quebec? Had Ontario producers bought a huge number of cheap weaners from Western Canada in the spring and fed them, counting on a summer price rally that never came?
The answer, according to Ontario Pork’s sales team manager Patrick O’Neil, was somewhat less dramatic than either of those scenarios. Packers were hanging onto contract hogs in July and slaughtering fewer of them, resulting in a surplus of pigs in barns.