Pigs 101 (A Start)

[IsaanAussie]

Pigs 101 is up to its 101st page and the current conversation is much the same as at the start. Seems none of us have found a golden rule for constant success. Personally I believe the answer is in feed costs versus feed conversion ratios. Production timing must be held. I really only ever played around the edges reducing the amount of feed purchased by using supplemental feeding of farm produced stuff. I held an FCR of 2.4 average and reduced the feed bill by maybe 10%. That lowered cost of production by about 3 baht, nothing like the drop from 52 to 41 baht mentioned above. 

Farm gate prices for farming in general are constantly being pushed down leading to larger holdings. That is not going to change. For us small guys, look for the answer on your own doorstep.

Watching with interest and hoping some wizard will wave his wand!

[thoongfoned]

for me i would look at it from a different angle. ie. breeding. as i know little about finnishing.

working that a sow will need to  eat 1000kg per year, or maybe you can do on less? 950kg even 900kg?? you would need to look at the weaned numbers that the sow can produce, including good born kg into good "weaned kg" and the time scale that  she needs to wean and to come back into heat, while maintaining good body contions, plus high conception rates........ with all the above working well and no outbreaks of virus/disease you will have to run on the more the better (pigs thats is) as the margins tend to be small, hence try and do all the work "in house" ie yourself. not forgeting selling all the pig waste ie poo/after birth/ converting dead animals into animal feed...ect ect. all that waste water can be either sold on (if lucky) or used in growing different crops, for diversity. not forgetting to use the methen gas to use as fuel for either cooking or engine use somewhere. then to either finish piglets if have space/money and have a ready market for either live pigs of the sale of meat at  a good conversion  of feed to kg in a quick time frame...... the list goes on, kind of endless if you have the spare time and money - the things that you "could" do with pigs............

the other opion could be to work for someone/company in one way or another with set prices for set kg/time frames. or like i read today just buy a pig and let the animal help with your mental health...............

[IsaanAussie]

My farm is farrow to finish and I agree the breeding costs are more involved as you have to cover the sows costs as well as the piglets. In my case the boars as well but lets leave that aside, boar vs AI. 

In response to your questions, my system was a small 4*4 batch farrowing (basically  sows farrowing every month) and I kept 4 gilts as replacements. I agree with about 1000 kg per sow per year. My averages were 2.4 litters per year per sow. Average weight at farrow of 1.6kg per piglet. 10 piglets weaned per litter. Weaning at 28 days with average weight of 8kg per piglet. The sows were feed either gestation or lactation grade feed and the piglets on creep and later starter grades. 

Feed costs are the largest cost factor. The answer must lay in maintaining the sow productivity and piglet growth rates but reducing the costs, obviously feed being the highest priority. So I agree with what you are saying. My point is you have to look beyond the commercial soy/maize/fishmeal feeds if you want to reduce costs to a point where you can still be profitable at the prices being talked about here. 

So that is where I'm heading, using cheap ingredients to produce high quality pelleted feeds on farm.

 

[Robert24]

Some good points here. My view is that if you have smaller batches of pigs to sell (less than 50/100) you should look into selling meat as well otherwise your profit is minimal. For me that worked out. We kill about 1 pig every 2 days for the meat we sell. I calculate a pro forma price of 55 baht to buy the pig from the farm business. I make approx 1000 baht per pig from the meat business (fully costed) and approx 300 baht per pig for the farm. So in total about 1300 per pig.

Larger batches (50+) I still sell to CP.

Bear in mind we have our own mom pigs and also male pigs for sperm.

But all in all it is still relatively low profit given the size of the investment and ultimate risk you run.

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[thoongfoned]

some good input here....

how i should have started before should have been with the gilts - selection at their birth, then proper care through till third heat cycle - 1st beeding. this is something that i have been looking at for a while.....for another day though......

feed is the key, driving down the cost like you say. good if you can produce your own but would imagine it would be very time consuming setting up, but once there......all good. another could be to try and drive down the cost by bulk buying? jake gets very good prices, it can be done.

using your figures, weaning at 28 day, the wifes sows would then be eating a little over 1100kg per year in this time frame, less for gilts but still added feed.  it is harder to wean early around day 15/17, but it can be done with good weight on the piglets and no problems with growth going straight on to only feed. all the farms that i talk to to  run in this way (many also that i read about on the web)and the averages across nearly 40 farms (farrow farms) are very similar, right through to thefinish stage allso and that work is also split between 100's of finish farm. kg very similar its just the deaths/rejects/born alive that differ.

yep selling the meat per kg is the way to go, or like people have said over the years on here, to sell direct to resturants or shops.

agree again on the returns vs risk if you are a "one man band", but thats half the fun of animals, you just dont know from one day to the next what will or could happen. at the end of the day if you could not afford to keep the farm running you would just sell up or close.

[thoongfoned]

edit. if wean at 28 day the wifes farm would use on average 1250kg per sow, that would be split "down" because of number of gilts/boars in farm at any one time 7 ish %.  so if you looked at parity 3 and onwards that kg per sow would be very high moving move towards 1500kg per sow on the way this farm runs. farm can only use 1000kg per pig per year, thats all it is allowed to use.big boss says (company)

[IsaanAussie]

Very interesting information and obviously important for larger scale farms. Mine has only ever housed a maximum of 100 pigs. I also work on group averages for the  co-housed batches of 4 sows that are seldom kept past parity 4, so I use a different set of parameters. Being independent probably allows me more options? Feed cost reduction is the remaining target. That target is 35% reduction against commercial feed cost for the same performance. That will drop my cost of production to under 50 baht.

To date I have run comparative trials on growers, finishers and the breeding herd with promising results. Not very scientific nor over an extended time but good enough to know I am heading in the right direction. Coupled with producing and using probiotics for gut health and fermenting certain feedstocks to improve digestibility, it has been a slow and careful path. 

The obvious questions are on what scale can it be done and at with labour implications? In my case it is a one man operation, me, and the equipment used is simple and labour intensive. Hardly applicable to the operations you guys run. Still of interest maybe. 

 

[thoongfoned]

^ you sound like you are on the right track for good costs reductions, you must know your stuff.......... in the past have read about the benifits of more "natural" gut health, again must know your stuff. hats off to you for all the hard work you have been upto/will be doing.

being independant  does give you move freedom........... over the years i have question the company on this and that  (how things are done) and then after getting my head around the new "ways" have always come to the conclution that they do know what they are on about, (should do with around 6000 contract farms.555)its mainly me that speaks up in the few seminars that i have been to (only white face there) most thais just get on with it right or wrong understand or not - a little like the school system i find......

good luck with everything and do keep sharing your findings, i do enjoy reading your posts, have read this thread from the beginning more than once (too much time on my hands.....)

[IsaanAussie]

Thanks for the kind thoughts. I'll be more than happy to share my findings (stumblings as often as not).

Regardless of the contract arrangement I would suggest you try EMA in the drinking/wash water if you don't already use it. The benefits are almost instant. At 5 baht per 1,000 litres it is cheap. 

 

[thoongfoned]

On ‎14‎/‎3‎/‎2560 at 5:54 AM, IsaanAussie said:

Very interesting information and obviously important for larger scale farms. Mine has only ever housed a maximum of 100 pigs. I also work on group averages for the  co-housed batches of 4 sows that are seldom kept past parity 4, so I use a different set of parameters. Being independent probably allows me more options? Feed cost reduction is the remaining target. That target is 35% reduction against commercial feed cost for the same performance. That will drop my cost of production to under 50 baht.

To date I have run comparative trials on growers, finishers and the breeding herd with promising results. Not very scientific nor over an extended time but good enough to know I am heading in the right direction. Coupled with producing and using probiotics for gut health and fermenting certain feedstocks to improve digestibility, it has been a slow and careful path. 

The obvious questions are on what scale can it be done and at with labour implications? In my case it is a one man operation, me, and the equipment used is simple and labour intensive. Hardly applicable to the operations you guys run. Still of interest maybe. 

 

why would you only keep the sow till around parity 4?

[IsaanAussie]

I had 4 batches of 4 sows. When changing sows I changed the whole batch of 4. They were litter mates. Parity 4 was the usually point at which I changed them out and coincided with the next batch of replacement gilts being ready. That way I maintained a parity average for the sows of between 2 and 3 and an average of weaned piglets between 9 and 10. Small farm method maybe, worked for me.

[thoongfoned]

small farm big farm i think it would be the same.ie the longer the sow can produce well the more money she should be making for you. by the 4th litter she is just getting started, 3-7  parity should be the best production/quality piglets produced in her time,(sweet spot) as long as she is producing well she can stand in the farm for many years...... company likes to try and keep the max parity at 9/10 but in the farm we have upto parity 14 at the mo and about 20% would be around parity 9 and over. many people i talk to are scared to keep a pig past parity 8/9 they think... well i dont know what they think really, production drop/pig to big maybe,ie to much damage done (this is one of the wifes hates of the older pigs) but from what  i can see if the timing is right (insemination) all is good, you will see more of a mixed bag.ie weight difference between piglets but this is no real problem. they tend to be easy to move also because they "have been and done it all before" on top you think about the financial benifits the older mum give to the farm, the biggest i have seen would be 270/280kg that would be a very fat mum, still ok when you choose to sell them onto the "next stage" the older sows that we have in the farm still wean plus 10, some makefor very good nurse mums too... just my thoughts.

[Aussie Breno]

On ‎9‎/‎3‎/‎2015 at 2:39 PM, nutterz64 said:

Hi Allgeier, Good to see you wanting to expand your farm. However, you might struggle to do it this way for many reasons not the least of which is that most sellers of piglets will only sell an entire litter... not ones or twos.

My advise is to either;

1. buy an entire litter of the pairing you want, raise them as finisher pigs, keep the two gilts that show good growth, body form and temperament and then sell the rest for profit.
2. Buy two gilts from a good breeder.

Option 1 will probably cost you about 15,000 baht (assuming 10 piglets @ 1500 baht each) plus food at about 38,000 baht whilst they are growing. Option 2 is going to cost you about 20,000 baht (10,000 baht each for a highbred Gilt). This is the least expensive, quickest and safest way to start your breeding programme.

Either way is fun and an education but always remember that with pigs there are no guarantees with anything. Just make sure to have fun with it and never stop learning.

all the best

Peter

Hi Nutterz I would like to buy two Gilts preferably in pig ,I live not to far from Nakhon Ratchasima (Korat) could you please give me some advice or a contact on where I could look to buy them , I want good quality breeding stock ,though we are not starting a pig farm (just an interest.)

[Ace of Pop]

Even Pigs get bored there.Good idea.[emoji200]?


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[Aussie Breno]

On ‎3‎/‎14‎/‎2017 at 9:54 AM, IsaanAussie said:

Very interesting information and obviously important for larger scale farms. Mine has only ever housed a maximum of 100 pigs. I also work on group averages for the  co-housed batches of 4 sows that are seldom kept past parity 4, so I use a different set of parameters. Being independent probably allows me more options? Feed cost reduction is the remaining target. That target is 35% reduction against commercial feed cost for the same performance. That will drop my cost of production to under 50 baht.

To date I have run comparative trials on growers, finishers and the breeding herd with promising results. Not very scientific nor over an extended time but good enough to know I am heading in the right direction. Coupled with producing and using probiotics for gut health and fermenting certain feedstocks to improve digestibility, it has been a slow and careful path. 

The obvious questions are on what scale can it be done and at with labour implications? In my case it is a one man operation, me, and the equipment used is simple and labour intensive. Hardly applicable to the operations you guys run. Still of interest maybe. 

 

 

On ‎4‎/‎4‎/‎2017 at 1:39 PM, Ace of Pop said:

Even Pigs get bored there.Good idea.?


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Hi Isaan Aussie , would you have any contacts on where I could purchase a couple of good breeding stock gilts , we are an hour south of Khon Kaen but don't mind driving a while to get good stock.  cheers

[Robert24]

Hi Isaan Aussie , would you have any contacts on where I could purchase a couple of good breeding stock gilts , we are an hour south of Khon Kaen but don't mind driving a while to get good stock.  cheers

Depends what you are looking for. My wife bought a 100% duroc mom pig from the government in Khon Kaen. But the issue there is that they have a queuing system, so you need to find a way to get into that queue.. Otherwise there are many farms selling mom pigs, key is to have the right plan how you want to develop your specie.

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[Aussie Breno]

On ‎4‎/‎8‎/‎2017 at 9:46 AM, Robert24 said:

Depends what you are looking for. My wife bought a 100% duroc mom pig from the government in Khon Kaen. But the issue there is that they have a queuing system, so you need to find a way to get into that queue.. Otherwise there are many farms selling mom pigs, key is to have the right plan how you want to develop your specie.

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Hi Robert would you have a three or four gilts that you could sell to me and if so what is your location .

thanks  " Brendan "

[thoongfoned]

On ‎8‎/‎4‎/‎2560 at 6:46 AM, Robert24 said:

Depends what you are looking for. My wife bought a 100% duroc mom pig from the government in Khon Kaen. But the issue there is that they have a queuing system, so you need to find a way to get into that queue.. Otherwise there are many farms selling mom pigs, key is to have the right plan how you want to develop your specie.

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says it all really, a que to buy gilts....... set the price at what you want......

just being noseyyy... what did it cost to get that duroc into your farm then? (dont say if dont want to...) vaccination history? age? kg?

over the years i have had a growing interest with gilts (what can be acheived with good stock ect...) the few gilt farms that were set up around the wifes area have all closed down and turned into finish farms as they all said there was not the money in "bringing the gilts on" i was lucky to get to have a look at 1 working gilt farm, same sort of set up as a finish farm, in layout, it was just up to the people how much time the boars spent in front of the gilts, and of course getting the right amount of weight on in time frame.

the last 6 or so months i have seen a change in direction from the gilts the wifes farm has been getting, gone from 200 ish days old to now 250 ish days old still same target weight of 145kg. still no heat history, but can not have it all.... to early to see if things will change, ie into heat quick and then onto a steady climb up the parities. from what i can make out the company must have been/is loosing crazy money in the gilts in this area due not coming into heat/culling of early parity sows.

[thoongfoned]

those that have pigs in non evap barns how are the sows/pigs holding up now the hot time is upon us again? around here its 40 plus in the day and still very hot at night, the farm is around 27c at the front end and 29/30c at the fan end, but it feels hot..... this year the electric seems to have dipped (spoken to ther high users and they say the same)  before the farm during the daywas run 100% on eletric power but now we have to split this between deisel /electric to get every thing running at the max.  this will make the running costs higher.... will get the wife to approach the PEA after the new year but i know the kind of response to expect...

[Robert24]

Hi Robert would you have a three or four gilts that you could sell to me and if so what is your location .
thanks  " Brendan "

My farm is based in Kalasin, Khong Chai district. Yes we could talk about selling a few mom pigs. Send me a private message and I can give you more details.

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[Robert24]

says it all really, a que to buy gilts....... set the price at what you want......
just being noseyyy... what did it cost to get that duroc into your farm then? (dont say if dont want to...) vaccination history? age? kg?
over the years i have had a growing interest with gilts (what can be acheived with good stock ect...) the few gilt farms that were set up around the wifes area have all closed down and turned into finish farms as they all said there was not the money in "bringing the gilts on" i was lucky to get to have a look at 1 working gilt farm, same sort of set up as a finish farm, in layout, it was just up to the people how much time the boars spent in front of the gilts, and of course getting the right amount of weight on in time frame.
the last 6 or so months i have seen a change in direction from the gilts the wifes farm has been getting, gone from 200 ish days old to now 250 ish days old still same target weight of 145kg. still no heat history, but can not have it all.... to early to see if things will change, ie into heat quick and then onto a steady climb up the parities. from what i can make out the company must have been/is loosing crazy money in the gilts in this area due not coming into heat/culling of early parity sows.

Those mom pigs from the government centre are actually good quality from my experience and people I have spoken to. The issue is that the queue is about 1 year because many farmers like to buy from there. So either you are lucky like my wife and can take over the queue at short notice or you have to wait. The Duroc mom pig was 8 months old and we paid 65 baht/kg (no additional charge for specie). You have to pick it up yourself. Again this was from their government centre in Khon Kaen.

Prior to that my wife bought an original Landrace (Norway) from another farm in Sisaket. There we paid a lot more for the specie. This is ultimately how we developed our own specie.

Hope this helps. I'm not an absolute expert but I learned a lot over time...

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[thoongfoned]

if people are willing to wait upto a year for one of these government pigs they must be good!

said pig have you bred her yet, how long did she take to come into heat? (this is how i judge the gilts) ie bought at 240 ish day bred by day 260.

i was reading about a farm/set up just north of bangkok some years ago,  here they use a danbred breed/mix  that they import then mix with ducro, ect... they get very good results ie 30+ weaned on a farm that has around 2000 sows, most live in open sided barns, they pride themselves on the fact that the sows can life and produce very well in the heat here, the boss had worked for banbred for many years before starting this operation, it is very well established now...... i think it was on the pigsite.com

[Robert24]

if people are willing to wait upto a year for one of these government pigs they must be good!
said pig have you bred her yet, how long did she take to come into heat? (this is how i judge the gilts) ie bought at 240 ish day bred by day 260.
i was reading about a farm/set up just north of bangkok some years ago,  here they use a danbred breed/mix  that they import then mix with ducro, ect... they get very good results ie 30+ weaned on a farm that has around 2000 sows, most live in open sided barns, they pride themselves on the fact that the sows can life and produce very well in the heat here, the boss had worked for banbred for many years before starting this operation, it is very well established now...... i think it was on the pigsite.com

The Duroc pig was ready for breeding, so next time she showed we mixed it with 100% Duroc sperm and she had 9 babies. She will have babies again next month, hope to get more this time.

I can't comment about the numbers you have mentioned. We try to get to an average of 12+ babies for the mom pigs. But it's not only the numbers you also want the right specie, i.e. grows well, long body etc...

I think the main reason for the long queue at the government centres is that they are relatively cheap and good quality.

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[IsaanAussie]

Just borrowed this image from facebook. Intercropping, shade for fertiliser. Gaseous emissions straight into the canopy a big plus. Makes sense to me.

[thoongfoned]

14 minutes ago, IsaanAussie said:

Just borrowed this image from facebook. Intercropping, shade for fertiliser. Gaseous emissions straight into the canopy a big plus. Makes sense to me.

that was always the place for the wifes pig farm, out the rubber plantation.... we spent 500,000 baht plus getting the ground works ect in place, then the bank said no to doing a loan on that peice of land because the access road was not a chanote, all 6 metre of it! fast forward 5 years and now that access road is on chanote paper work but the 11/12 year old trees have all gone, a couple of good fires over the past three years killed almost all the rubber trees... now they have all gone and been sold or burnt for charcoal. (the brown water from the pigs would be great, and also all that poo) snowandpigs has his  pig farm at his rubber farm... win win for me, if we had built out the plantation the trees would still be alive, as we could have stopped the fires.....

the ground works we put in place have a start of a finisher farm "being built" its is slow work because it only gets worked on when we have the spare cash to hand, (stopped sending money over here many years ago due mainly to poor exchange rates and the fact that the wife now "keeps" the family) what with all the children and then upgrading of the current farm the built is on a constent hold/start basis, still the right to pig farm this land is renewed every year by the local government and the company dont seem to have changed there mind on the allocation of piglets.......... never know could get a finisher farm one day.

[IsaanAussie]

20/20 hindsight. Easy as pie. You have survived this long, keep living the dream

[thoongfoned]

well its bloody hot at the mo,40 plus most days and very hi humidity.... everyone must be using the electric to the full because can see that we have large voltage drop most of the time (can not use all the fans and pumps  ect... at once) have to split the extractor fans electric/diesel at the mo and 90% diesel night time (so can run aircons) had a party "next door" yesterday and i could here the morlam singer saying that there was not enough electric to put on a really loud show...... could see the difference in the farm yesterday - very little electric, could not even turn the submerge water pump on, i was happy when they packed up and went home.... baaa -humbug i know...

come the wifes pay day gona get her to buy another kubota tractor head and new gear box for the running of the fans, will help to save diesel.... at the back of the farm (fans) day time temp is 31.... not happy about this but can do no more.... save get the wife to invest in a transformer from the PEA.....

having good born alive numbers over the past 2 months, makes up for the 3 bad months the farm had before.... wean 3 mums today and the average kg per piglet was a massive 7.3kg at 19 day! 10.6 average per mum weaned. have not seen kg like this for years..... they must be doing something right in the farm at the mo.........

[jompa67]

Hi guys,

Do any of you know where to sell larger quantity's of piglets. We starting to have much more than we can sell in the area where we live (200 - 300 per month). And our feed supplier have fail to help us. We know that there is many raiser that want to have piglets at 22 kg, but where to find them? Do you know if there is any place on the web where buyer and seller can meet?

[thoongfoned]

maybe change the feed supplier to one that will take what you produce.... 

[jompa67]

Do you have any feed supplier on you mind. We had this kind of deal with our current supplier but now when we start to have alot of piglet to sell, they are not much of help. We use betagro before and they was even worse.