IsaanAussie

dmax

Have you considered cassava? Easy to grow, grows anywhere, and I understand demand is increasing. Lots of info on this site

Issanaussie

That's a nice little tractor you have there. I assume it's the 3 point hitch pump you're talking about? Probably not broken. Here's a website for you

http://www.hoyetract.../brokenlift.htm

Dont I wish! No main pump is shot. As it was in 2008

DMAX,

I would like to add a word of caution on following popular trends of investment such as machinery and contracting.

I purchased my second hand tractor a few years ago to support what I am doing, not to make money ploughing for other people. No-one in my village had ever seen a rotary cultivator. At that time there was one Ford 6610 in the area that was always busy and demanded a decent rate per hour. The operator was brilliant so he represented good value. I hired a team of tractors and an excavator to clear a 12 rai plot, again good machines and operators. Again not cheap but exactly what I wanted done. As for rice harvesters, there wasn't any around.

But that was then. Today the situation is different, having imagined the "fortunes" made by the original few, the many have become tractor operators flooding the market with cheap contractors. The rates are half what they were and competition is fierce. Given Finner's comments on abandoned equipment when in need of repair, the ease of finance and lack of market research of most Thais, the almost total lack of any preventative or even regular maintenance and the complete disrespect shown to machinery, investing in farm equipment for your Thai family to operate and make money is a fantasy.

Be wary of investing in this type of enterprise. If you are going to do so then with respect you will need to follow PN's lead and do it professionally. That will need more capital than you have nominated to establish and even more to develop a market and maintain the equipment. Prepare the ground, harvest the rice, and then bale the straw. Great business model, good returns but constant hard work and investment. Yes, lesser equipment will do the job maybe, but spending half the day pulling bogged harvesters out doesn't make money in such a short and intense season.

As a related issue, student housing has been mentioned. When I first visited Isaan some ten years ago, I was amazed at the number of shop-house complexes that were being built in the most unlikely spots. Years later many are still unoccupied, some uncompleted and even some abandoned. Whilst there were very good taxation benefits for the rich during this time as the government attempted to decentralise, many where pure folly. I wonder how many people building student accommodation have actually studied the project in depth? Number of rooms by the rate per month way of calculating ROI and hence investment decisions seems a little thin to me.

DMAX, there is nothing wrong with playing follow the leader but make sure the leader knows what he is doing!

Isaan Aussie

Finner,

Can you provide any clues as too why all these wonderful creations of yours have not paid off?

Isaan Aussie

Well, in the first place, IA, none of these creations were my idea except for buying a couple of used 20 Hp tractors for my own enjoyment. Luckily I like working on them when they get trashed so all is not lost. All the ideas were generated by the family to get rich and I thought well it seemed like a good idea at the time (and I still think so actually) but as someone posted earlier, rural people seem to be happy working two or three months a year, then their enthusiasm seems to wane.

Secondly, the fish and frog ponds were located too far away from the house, hence free fish and frogs for closer neighbours, third, lack of a committed family member to take charge, eg the older brother working as a painter in Bangkok who wanted to return home and had a great idea to use a 6 wheel truck, made money till repairs were needed, parked it and became a painter in the village for falangs building houses. I don't like working on 6 wheel trucks so it sits beside the house as a great reminder to all and sundry not to ask the local village idiot (me) not to provide dough for any more "sure thing" schemes.

Other than that, I'm having fun and learn more about human nature every day. Been here 30 years already and no 2 days are ever the same.

Oh yeah, forgot about the mushroom houses. They were built in a windy location while I was away for a couple of months. Wood frame construction with that black mesh sunshield stuff covering them. Didn't last a month.

Finner,

I have something which you may enjoy then, a 28HP Iseki 4WD tractor with a broken hydraulic pump and various other problems. Please feel free to tinker again, or maybe you can give me some advice on where to get parts and a decent tractor mechanic.

I made reference to the 2-3 month work year earlier. Your reference to the Family Leading Hand or rather the lack of one, I believe is a key problem to most of us. I also believe that the combination of the two issues causes many people to chew up capital by sitting waiting for others to either get motivated enough to work or to have finished planting/harvesting.

To DMAX, these are not small issues and make me hasten to add that Isaan is seasonal, driven by the single rain fed rice crop. Everything is effected by the economics of rice to some extent. Whatever you chose to invest in plan around the effects of what happens every year in your area.

Isaan Aussie

DMAX

I look at the fish ponds and the frog farm that I built that everyone except me gets fish and frogs from;

I look at the abandoned pig house that I built;

I look at the place where the mushroom houses used to stand before it got windy;

I look at my neighbour's abandoned CP chicken ranch;

I look at the neighbour on the other side whose buffalos keep dying or being stolen that take 24 hr a day care;

I look through the weeds at the oil palm tree farm I paid for but eveyone's too <deleted> lazy to take care of;

I look at the tractors I bought for the family to use that they destroy every year (I have fun with them though)

I look at the 6 wheel truck I bought the family so that they could become rich as it sits rusting needing repairs.

And I don't live in that desert called Issan!

Best investment I ever made in this country was term deposits at the bank at a huge 3% minus tax and the condo which has doubled in price over the last 10 years.

The old girl has decided to get into the student rental thing as a couple of others have mentioned. I'll let you know how much money I lose on that...........

Finner,

Can you provide any clues as too why all these wonderful creations of yours have not paid off?

Isaan Aussie

Check out scours.

http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/27_13550.htm

IA

RBH and Fruity,

Guys you were both on my expected list of quick responders and I believe you both have a role to play if this is to get off the ground.

RBH, don't sell yourself short, I am talking about an information source for raising pigs here in Thailand and tips like what the locals expect you to emulate to satisfy traditional beliefs is as much a part of any success here as anything else.

Fruity my old son, what can I say, if there is ever someone that most of us look up to for advice, it's you. A lifetime of rearing animals and the heartbreak and thrill of adapting to Thai conditions tells me you will become the backbone of any PIGS 101.

To all readers, the PIGS 101 concept should be credited to its creator, Bina, not to me. I asked for advice on how I could avoid having to do searches all the time to find time expired but useful information.

So hopefully we can move forward and create something useful to ourselves and the increasing tide of our countrymen that will follow us.

In closing another suggestion Bina made was to include as much Thai Language information as possible for the benefit of our spouses and the role they all help with, making us understand and be understood. I believe this to be a great idea.

Isaan Aussie

OK Guys time for an idea.

This thread seems to be exposing some real expertise so I think its time to ask for some collective input. How about establishing a PIGS 101 INFORMATION SOURCE? Some form of e-manual of how to tips and ideas, things that work well, ways to value add, market opportunities, and linkages to external sources of information. A single point to go to for pig farming data, not a series of individual topic threads that end up sliding off the front page.

I have discussed the concept with our moderator Bina and Pigs 101 was the suggested response. I am quite happy to pull it all together. Perhaps each of us, serious pig farmers, could assume a lead role in collecting material of special interest to them as a start.

I dont know if an open debate will get us far so I suggest to anyone who sees a benefit, please PM me if you are interested and I will put together a consensus of your ideas for circulation and comment. When that is finished we can submit the concept to Bina for approval and implementation.

Isaanaussie

David,

Preserves, jams and jellies require equipment, a clean environment and some skills. You can get all the information you need from the internet. Westerner style equipment is not easy to find upcountry so you may have to improvise.

As a thought have you thought about making dried fruit products? For instance papaya rollups or leather. Mixed up with sugar and spread thinly onto a plastic sheet and put out in the sun to dry. Kids like them and they keep well. Banana chips, chocolate covered or honey glazed, bananas in batter with syrup.

If you are going to produce sun dried products, do a bit of research into a solar drier. I will eventually get around to building one. Basically a box 8x4 ft with a few sheets or corrugated iron painted black as the base and a sheet of glass as the top surface. These surfaces separated by an 8" air gap. Set that up facing north south as a ramp and feed the heated air into the bottom of a box with a rack of product. A small fan to force more air through if needed.

We have a shop village shop and serve stuff we can make ourselves to the local kids. Pancakes and waffles are good sellers that would go well served with fresh fruits or conserves. Fruit salads, banana cakes etc.... endless list, much of it can be made in batches and frozen.

The question really is, it is all do-able, but what are you going to do with the end product? In our case this market segment comprises about 40 children that all can manage 5 or 10 baht for a treat each day. A princely 200 or 300 baht per day with about 50% as profit. Is it worth it? Yes, there is a small profit in it but a tremendous amount of satisfaction as well.

Isaan Aussie

Charlie,

See, told you it would be worth the wait. Well done Fruity.

IA

Charlie,

Your questions are great, being far away from expert in this field I will wait until Mr Oxytocin (Fruity) responds. Seriously His will be a response worth reading.

IA

Theives are my least favourite people and unfortunately the issue of personal ownership and effort is not held in the same regard here in Thailand and especially here in rural areas like Isaan. But theft is not a condition unique to Thailand. Yes it happens around me too, and not just to farangs. A local farmer who was housing his cattle remote to his home lost the lot. People here simply do not leave things they value in open view or under the control of unsuitable people. Take what precautions you can, electric fences, locked gates, barking dogs and even overnight watchmen can all be effective but also can be beaten.

Stealing stock, especially larger animals involves a little more than a couple of opportunistic and thirsty young guys on a motorcycle. You would think that even a pickup truck with two buffalos, a pile of rabbits and chickens stuffed aboard would attract some form of attention. One thing that is for sure here, once it's gone it will stay gone.

Isaanaussie

This story is about the spiritual side of life here in Isaan. I am not a religious person but there are things that happen here which are difficult to explain. The fatalistic approach of Buddhism where everything is seen as temporary and importance placed on doing the right thing, co-exist with all the jealousy and vindictive nature of the ghosts that haunt at least most of the programming on the local TV. So for what its worth, enjoy my latest offering.

Living with the Spirits.pdf

Isaan Aussie

Did this thread die?

I really enjoyed reading what the guys posted here

Yeah, and I enjoyed writing them. OK give me a day or two and see what I can come up with. Come on guys, join in!

Khonwan,

I bow to your experience but will add that the worm and larvae meals both contain good levels of amino acids, lysine in particular. The BSF larvae contain too much fat but the oil can be expressed prior to making the meal. I would like to formulate a supplement based on these meals plus some vegetable matter such as duckweed. Whilst I have done a lot of reading on this I will need to seek some help from the experts. Other products such as silage, sweet potato, maize, sunflower meal are all under study and have been for some time.

Currently I use commercial feeds and will remain doing so until I can be sure of equal or better results. I completely agreed that cost is not the primary issue, lean pork from happy pigs is my prime motivation. As always any and all advice is welcome.

Isaan Aussie

As IsaanAussie implies, it depends. If you are only growing pigs (not breeding)and if you are using commercial feed only (not making your own) and if you have a power washer (and are not "nuts" like IsaanAusie ), 1 person can quite easily manage 500 pigs over an 8-9 hour day. I was growing around 140 at the same time: I found that it took me an average one minute per pig for feeding and cleaning.

By the way, I found growing pigs to be a recipe for financial disaster. You can make 1,000 baht or so per pig….or lose 1,000 baht or so per pig. With the none-existent market intelligence available to most farmers, you will have no idea of the price attainable until you are ready to sell…having already forked out a lot of money not to mention your "free" time/labour. I always now advise people to breed pigs instead, but then only if they are prepared for many sleepless nights (I was/am not). Making your own pig-feed is doable but demands good understanding of pig nutritional needs and attention to the nutritional balance of the feed…plus lots of time.

With respect to vets, be prepared to research and be your own vet. My experience of them here (when I was breeding cattle) is very negative in respect to their knowledge and willingness to get their nice office-shoes dirty.

Rgds

Khonwan

Khonwan,

Time to own up to having a power washer, great tool.

Your comments on the ease of losing money growing pigs are spot on. IMHO you have to try to stick to your prices when selling in the local "special occasion" market and be prepared to say no. Every potential customer is looking for a bargain and like most Thai shoppers will drive miles to save 10 baht. There is always a local farmer out there who is "hot for money" and will sell cheaply. So the reality is you have to be flexible, understand your current position and your options for selling your stock because that what your pigs are, stock, tradeable commodities just like cans of soup or tractor parts.

I am very interested in making feed to reduce cost. Your comments on nutritional control and cost comparisons I have done lead me to believe that completely replacing commercial feeds is not doable in my case at this time. The best I can hope for is to produce supplemental feeds which will allow me to use cheaper feeds by boosting the content. Consider a pig at 60 to 70 Kgs that eats code 954 (60 to 90 Kg) at 340 baht/bag. Increase the protein levels by making alternatives to fish meal and I could use 955 at 280 baht. Thats a 60 baht per bag saving by bumping up the protein level by 2%.

So Glomp, my office bound number crunching friend, play with these numbers.

By farming worms and or BSF larvae using the pig and other farm wastes, I can produce vermi-meal at 40+% protein with the only cost being drying and grinding the meal. To the bag of 955 I have to add (30 kg x 2% at 40% etc..) around 150 grams of vermimeal, that needs 300 grams of worms. So is it worth it? The meal is worth 60 baht (on feed cost difference) or around 400 baht per kilo. The compost worms can yield a 300% population growth in a period of 3 months just by feeding them cow manure. WOW, make more and sell it to people is the same position, not so fast.... Lets do a reality check. Fish meal is currently some 25 to 30 baht/kg and to start the worm farm, worms are 1,500 baht a kg.

I can save 60 baht less costs per bag. To sell the meal, I would have to beat the fish meal price which would mean some 20 baht/kg retail at maximum. Thats 2kg of worms that would cost 3,000 baht that could be sold for 40 baht. Nar, dont think so, I will save my 60 baht and leave the worms produce more castings which reduce my fertiliser costs.

On the vet issue, I am lucky currently I have a tame team of local vets added by an experienced herdsman who don't mind dirty boots.

Isaan Aussie

Fruity, really,

".....in my book" Indeed, when was the last time you could find your blue book?

"........ for 250 baht per month" Agreed, sometimes we do some crazy stuff. We keep pigs too long, build grower sheds we dont need, and all for 250 baht a month. Be consoled though. If its a positive entry on the ledger, all is forgiven.

".... sires with an FCR of 1.7" WOW get me some of that, and a bigger stall. Mine is 300 kg now and eats a good 4 kgs a day. At that rate Bert the boar will be 6ft tall by Christmas. I think FCR of 3.5 to 4 is all I want to achieve in a working boar.

Just gagging mate, we Aussie battlers like to take the wee wee every now and then.

IA

So im not far out in my thinking. How many pigs is it reasonable to manage per person? Ie when do you need employees.

Also thanks for this and other good farming threads.

Glomp,

This is a little like asking how long is a piece of string. It depends on how complex you choice to make your life.

If you use a hose to wash out the pens into a pond and have an automatic feed dispensing unit then the daily chores are not to bad. The operative word being daily, every day, twice. The first decision is therefore to commit personally to a 7 day a week 365 days a year work program regardless of the hours per day.

In my case I must be nuts because I dry muck out the pens before washing and compost all the manure with straw which needs to be chopped, the compost has to be turned and finished material bagged. I am even more crazy, I also use the compost as worm bedding and the worms need to be fed and I am starting mushroom farming. So my days are long and apart from the tasks listed I can usually fit in 3 or 4 hours to get other things done each day. Currently I am caring for 23 pigs single handed.

The second decision is the type of operation you intend to run. Obviously there are a lot of hours (and sleepless nights) involved in breeding that dont apply to a grow/finish operation. Thirdly, your level of knowledge. What you cannot do yourself has to be covered somehow.

I can't give you a direct answer as I dont know how to quantify by number of pigs alone. Perhaps others can?

Isaan Aussie

So if im reading you correctly, to get a "reasonable" family providing income of 40k per month you would need to have quite a few of the critters.

   Pigs sold    Total pigs
55    216,37        1186,55
59    68,39        375,05
61    50,96        279,48
63    40,61        222,73
65    33,76        185,13

Pigs sold is the amount divided by profits per 100kg pig "farrow to finish" from the excel files.

To always have the required amount of pigs each month one months worth of pigs are multiplied by 5,48 as the mean growing time in months.

This also assumes the taxman doesn't know where you live and no pigs get sick or die and work is free.

For pig farmers sake i hope my math sucks, much like my grades from school suggests

No Glomp your maths aren't that bad. You touched two key points for someone trying to make a living pig farming. First, yes you need to sell a lot of pigs and second, to have a continuous supply of 100 kg market ready pigs you need a lot, lot more.

Assume that you could house such a large number, the feed bill accumulates very quickly before you sell that first batch. Working capital is the potential shop stopper.

Isaan Aussie

I issue an open invitation to those whose business is built around contract growing. What I have posted does not cover this and makes no claim to do so. Please if you are into a contract farming arrangement, take a minute or two to offer a guide as to how to approach that investment. We have all made more mistakes than we have kicked goals. Hopefully the purpose of this forum is to help others axoid the pitfalls

IA

What is "Non feed cost (%)" ?

It covers general overhead and other costs such as vet fees or drug costs, labour, electricity, etc..... Industry standard is about 30 percent. Hence I calculated feed costs, assumed that was 70% and factored up accordingly. It does fit my numbers but the objective here was to provide a general guideline, not my chart of accounts.

IA

For those prospective pig farmers and to answer the most common question I get, "Is there a profit to be made in pig farming?" I have included another rough spreadsheet. It shows the table I posted before and I have added the feed codes I use, the cost and volumes involved.

The table details the actual costs for both a breeding to finish operation and for a grow and finish operation. In simple terms for where you breed the pigs or just buy them as piglets and feed them to finish at 100 kg. Currently the web sale price is 65 baht but that like most things is locally variable so I have listed the margins of a range of live weight prices under the current BKK price so comparisons can be made.

Note that I have used an industry standard overhead ratio or non-feed cost, of 30% for farrow/finish operations and 25% for growing.

As I said it is a bit rough but for those who want to get an understanding quickly, a few minutes figuring it out may be worthwhile.

Book2.xls

Isaan Aussie

PS. For those in the game already, hopefully it will provide a talking point despite the simplistic approach. I am sure your figures are more complex as are my own.

Hi Pig People,

Some montha ago I posted a table of FCR rates for growing pigs. It was the best information to hand at the time but not based on Thai conditions. Since then I have been tracking the growth of a litter of my pigs and found that they seemed to lag behind those targets from the start. Recently I found a Thai industry produced chart which seems to fit my actual numbers much better. Especially for young pigs. I have yet to finish checking against feed consumption numbers so I cannot say these numbers are confirmed, but for those interested have a look at this chart. I would appreciate any comments or comparisons.

Book1.xls

Isaan Aussie

Edited to include excel as pdf's now appear to be not allowed

This is some other bamboo growing close to where we live.

Hi Smithson, do you know what types of bamboo is that? Thanks in advance.

The Thais call it Mai Pai Troong

IA

Yeah, we dry chilli much the same way, usually by putting the baskets on thr iron roof. The issue is is takes a long time and is labour intensive in having to load and unload every day, apart from monitoring weather and even birds.

I am thinking of constructing a simple solar convection drier from a few sheets of corrugated iron painted black and a glass plate over the top. That would ramp upwards to and into the base of a box with several layers of trays of fruit in racks. The fruit box also having a glass top. On the opposite side is an exit port. or chimney, this could have a small fan inside it to force the airflow. I figure it should speed up the drying process considerably.

Isaan Aussie