Good advice is beyond price. Episode 3: high-quality air
Dr. Dirk Hesse, independent pork industry consultant, director of AGRIKontakt consulting company
It’s not a secret that either a human being or an animal (we mean a pig here) dies within 10 minutes without air. That’s why high-quality air on a pig farm is very important, but also a difficult-to-achieve thing. Taking into account the peculiarities of the business, pig farms will hardly smell of flowers! On the other hand, there are ways to make pig farm air less “aggressive” (it becomes so due to harmful gases, particularly ammonia).
Good advice is always undated Episode 2: maximizing productivity of sows, peculiarities of insemination and group housing of gestating sows
Dr. Dirk Hesse, independent pork industry consultant, director of consulting company AGRIKontakt
If you were asked what a sow needs to give birth to a big number of piglets, I am sure you would at once start talking about providing optimal conditions of environment, balanced feeding, peculiarities of genetics and so on. Of course it’s true and very important. But among this “global” aspects we often forget about the main thing — the process of insemination itself.
Control points of the farm efficiency
Simon Grey, international consultant on management of pig farms, director of Checkfarm Consulting Ltd
Farm efficiency can’t be a matter in question if the owner does not understand their business. Why do we produce pigs? To make profit, there are no other reasons! And what is profit? This is sales minus production costs. What is really important for pig production business — number of kilograms a farm sells. Everything is very simple! You don’t need to be lost in in masses of meaningless numbers and complicate a very simple process. How to achieve this target? There is an infinite number of ways. Let’s concentrate on the control points of the farm efficiency.
State Support of Pig Producers in EU: Dispelling Myths!
Somehow it became the custom that we strongly believe that it can’t be worse than in Ukraine and better than abroad. It also concerns pig production, particularly the questions of state support. However, as it turned out: grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. After speaking to experts of EU countries it emerged that there are also a lot of «hidden rocks» there and the situation differs from country to country. So let’s clear up where pig producers have better relations with government!
Optimizing pig flow
Dr. John Carr, independent pork industry consultant
It is very easy to convince yourself that your farm is productive and yet you are still not making money. There can be only one reason — you have not realized that there are only two aspects of production that can be proven. The amount of pig meat you have been paid for and the physical size of your farm. Pig farming is not only about 30 pigs per sow per year or any other per sow parameter for that matter. While these numbers are useful in telling you where on the farm performance is suboptimal they say nothing about the potential of the farm. When you accept the truth about productive pig farming you ask the other question: «How to sell the maximum kilos of meat from the space I have? The answer is easy — you have to optimize Pig Flow.
Good advice is always undated
Episode 1: feeds, feeders, water and drinkers
The books are very wise but practice is often more important. That’s why it’s very useful to meet the experts who have seen a lot of mistakes and know their reasons, so they can give a valuable advice. Our magazine had an opportunity to get to know such an experienced expert — Dirk Hesse — during two-day seminar, organized by German Agrarian Centre. He didn’t grudge to share his knowledge and experience, which he’s got on the best German and Danish farms. The first piece of advice — in the article.
What an effective management should be
What are the chances that a car won’t crash if a driver can’t drive? The same is about pig production. If you want your farm to be efficient then you won’t manage without skilled “navigators”: an independent consultant to point out mistakes and help to work out a strategy of development, and a manager to turn these plans into life. It’s a pity, but Ukrainian pig producers still do not realize it. What they miss in this case, told us a world-famous independent consultant Simon Grey.
Maximising Output From A Sow Farm
The traditional measurement for the efficiency of a sow farm is ‘pigs per sow per year’. If you ask 100 pig farmers or pig farm managers how the farm is performing they will probably all quote how many pigs per sow per year they are doing. It is even used to compare the efficiency of different countries.
As a method of measuring sow farm efficiency it is seriously flawed. It tells us only what individual sows are doing but it tells us little about the business. The reasons are as follows.
Feed wastage
In a time of record feed prices, it is essential that feed wastage be minimized. It is estimated that 10% of feed delivered is wasted on the average farm. On a 250 sow unit this can be more than 150 tonnes of feed per year (whole farm — farrow to finish — feed consumption at 6.3 tonnes per sow per year). Feed is wasted along the entire feed line from field to rectum! This article details some of the areas where this wastage occurs at the farm level and focuses on simple management practices to reduce this waste. Reducing feed wastage by half would amount to a reduction in cost of 8-9 AU$c/kgdeadweight — Au$6.30 per pig sold (70kg dead weight — head off —Western Australia norm). This could be the difference between profit and loss on many farms.
Top-7 mistakes of pork producers
«We keep pigs only for one reason — to make money», — the presentation of the famous British expert Simon Grey began with these words at the IV International Congress Profitable Pig Production. You will find his advice how to avoid the most common mistakes in pig production in this article. It is easy to be successful, the only thing that is necessary for that is to evaluate the situation correctly and make a right decision!
