Pigs 101 (A Start)

[cobbler]

just been going through the wifes paper work, month end, and was surprised to see the born alive numbers. these pigs were AI ed march into april and looking at my records it was very hot then, day and night.... the bad bit had 3 mums that birthed total mummified piglets, mostly small black jobbies that indicate death before day 50. due to the heat me thinks..... spoken with other farms and also seen on facebook shares that a good few farms have been having same problems.
even including these 3 mum total lost the born alive was still over 12 per mum on 47 mums for the month, the farm is currently running at death/crushing at under 3 percent a month at the mo for the year, last month was under 1 percent..... but that was on only 37 mum for the month. looking at the books over the years I can see trends that indicate when the farm has problem months due to mummified piglets the born/wean numbers on the other mum are very high..........
today the farm has had 4 mums birthing so far and has 64 viable piglets..... with another 3 small piglets that were born at 1kg each and 2 mummified, crazy mumbers at the mo.
sister in law has had 2 mums birthed this month and both have 11 piglets alive each at around day 10 and 17 at the mo. she has the mums in a pen so that the sow can walk about, only 1 piglet lost to crushing so far.
during the cold season this year we are going to change the ceiling in the farm and try and stop the heat ingress this way, with a bit of luck it will cut the mummified piglet numbers and save and running costs

Love your honesty. Riminds me of my piggery days i Philippines. Lol

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[IsaanAussie]

So the live weight price is being attacked again I hear. 48 baht or there abouts, geez! What's the feeling guys? 

[thoongfoned]

On 24/10/2560 at 5:10 AM, IsaanAussie said:

So the live weight price is being attacked again I hear. 48 baht or there abouts, geez! What's the feeling guys? 

for the wifes business its makes no difference at all..... 10 baht a kg or 100 baht a kg.....

the sister in law has been offered around the 40 baht a kg now for the past 2 months from wholesale type fellas, the main guy she used to sell to said a while back the price was going to fall, he has been 40 baht for some time and the other few she knows soon fell in to line with his low pricing..

sister in law has been selling all her finished pigs for past few months to people in a around the village, dont sell per kg, just set a price on sight, seems to do her well. the pig i looked at the other day i would have said was 75-80kg she got 4000 baht for it... most of her finished pigs are in this kg range and the price she gets is about the 4000 baht per animal give or take, she is happy which is the main thing. what with the rice harvest getting going now she will sell more pigs....

she only keeps about 50 or so animals so its sort of a hobby for her and her eldest children. in the past month she has had 2 sows give birth 1 birthed 18 alive, the other 11...... natural matings. from what i can see those that were born this month will be ready for the pot by the time the sow births again.

from the people the wifes speaks with on face book, 45 baht  per kg on a finished pig aint no good.....for me it would time to buy a lot of freezer units and sell the animal in bits...

[Robert24]

Local prices in Issan are around 44-45 baht now. Broker prices about 48-50 baht. If your sister in law sells pigs at 75-80kg at 4000 baht, she obviously gets 50baht+ which is very good in the current market environment. But from my experience both in North and Issan, people usually scale pigs here and agree pricing by kg. My recommendation would be though to sell somewhere in the range of 90-110kg, she would make some more money that way.
As for market prices, I hear that a lot farmers have stopped growing pigs, so one would think over the next months supply should considerably drop and prices rebound but we will see.

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[thoongfoned]

3 hours ago, Robert24 said:

Local prices in Issan are around 44-45 baht now. Broker prices about 48-50 baht. If your sister in law sells pigs at 75-80kg at 4000 baht, she obviously gets 50baht+ which is very good in the current market environment. But from my experience both in North and Issan, people usually scale pigs here and agree pricing by kg. My recommendation would be though to sell somewhere in the range of 90-110kg, she would make some more money that way.
As for market prices, I hear that a lot farmers have stopped growing pigs, so one would think over the next months supply should considerably drop and prices rebound but we will see.

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nah, she does not get the kg on the pigs fast enough, thats why she sales at alower weight, and does not feed 100 percent shop bought feed. back in june-july i offered my advise like you say try and get the growers to 100kg and rear some gilts from piglet too, we have an unfinished barn that i thought might come in handy for her later on, bought some feed ect, and she was happy- interested but over time i can see that she is just happy doing her own thing...  

its like the main daily workers that have worked in the wifes farm for 5 years, we changed the way they do things and got paid, they were not happy in the changes in jobs so we had to let them go, people get set in there ways (i see this in my work at home too) and do not like change..... 

village sales are always by eye, we used to sell cull sows at the farm for years, always by eye. the cull sows that get bought whole sale for the past 3 years are all my eye, that would be around 200 sow culling every month just from this little area. the gilts we get in the farm are all done by eye, and the guys that do the kg on the paper work need glasses is all i can say...

the price of the cuts of pork and the minced pork is and has been very cheap in the supermarkets now for a good while, the cheapest minced pork i saw in macro the other day was 75baht per kg, cp was a little over 100baht kg, frozen. fresh cuts go for around the 100 baht a kg too.....cheap cheap....

[IsaanAussie]

Interesting. What about feed costs? Are they falling as well?

[thoongfoned]

23 minutes ago, IsaanAussie said:

Interesting. What about feed costs? Are they falling as well?

we had a delivery today, feed bill was the same amount, has not changed in years, but this is all internal sales.

sister in law has been cutting more vegetation from our farm this rainy season, have alot of people with cows come cut most day too, has even started using some algae in with the veg and feed mix that she concocts. i will ask her if the shop feed is cheaper, my guess is it is not, she only buys bags here and there, the local taxi/lorry guys buy for her and they always put money on top for diesel ect...

on driving about this morning can see a dairy farm up the road is mixing its own feed/meal had a large mound sit under cover, not seen this before, but i dont really use that road....

[IsaanAussie]

Sounds right to me. Not a bright picture for the small scale "grow out" farms. But the same opportunity exists to reduce cost of production via feed if you can make it yourself and/or value add to the product. Interesting that the CP pork price has dropped.

That seems to indicate that the price squeeze is more permanent, as with rice and rubber. Ultimately leading to consolidation of farms. Farming now employs half the numbers and they are aging fast. Mechanisation is the norm. The future is arriving faster and faster is seems. 

[thoongfoned]

 around the farm i can see the changes, few plots over the "river" have all been cut with rice harvesters in the past 2 days, large plots but before always hand cut. fella and wife team were given 20 ish rai to farm last year, next door to us. before it was sugar cane but the yeilds were only 7 ish ton per rai so they thought try and mix it up abit, loads of different mini crops. after adding irragation water towers ect (they have 47hp tractor too) they have given up on the small holding idea and gone back to sugar cane, planting/preparing now. all the money from this little adventure has come from family working in south korea....  husband and wife are due to fly out to south korea after cane planting done....  most people that farm localy do so with money from out the province or country being sent in to fund planting havesting ect....

alot of people are trying to get contract fish farms set up at the mo, long waiting list so im told in this area. 

more and more cane gets planted every year, mainly a large family with all the machines ect renting and farming the lands. even wifes brother inlaw has cleared his euca land and getting the macro in to dig out then plant with cane, have told him he can flood land from the back wash off the pigs, other cane land around the wifes farm had been using the back wash water soon after planting last year and the cane looks good and thick now, not vits bought or add...

people around still want to get into the contract pig business but the local villagers mainly block news farms, they have to be a long way out to get the ok. from what hear the company is still expanding in large numbers in and around different ampurs.....

poo sales are taking off again at the mo with the wife taking orders everywhere she goes, mainly cane farms and rubber tree plantations.

 

[IsaanAussie]

All familiar stuff to me. I composted all our manure and most of that was sold and in turn I reduced my feed bill by some 25%. Taking that a step further and processing the compost into fertiliser would increase its value 4 to 5 times. The issue with all that is having the available labour.

But what I am sure of is small farms have to reduce their external spend to survive. The other key issue is diversification, a bit of everything rather than mono-cropping or single enterprise. I look at friends into rubber plantations that did extremely well to start, now its volume based get big or get out. 

 

[Robert24]

It's interesting though that meat prices have not dropped nearly as much as pig prices. Been to Macro yesterday and they still sell most parts for more than 100 baht. So one option to explore is to sell meat yourself cushion the impact from falling pig prices.

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[thoongfoned]

18 hours ago, IsaanAussie said:

All familiar stuff to me. I composted all our manure and most of that was sold and in turn I reduced my feed bill by some 25%. Taking that a step further and processing the compost into fertiliser would increase its value 4 to 5 times. The issue with all that is having the available labour.

But what I am sure of is small farms have to reduce their external spend to survive. The other key issue is diversification, a bit of everything rather than mono-cropping or single enterprise. I look at friends into rubber plantations that did extremely well to start, now its volume based get big or get out. 

 

 sales are volume based,  fish or a house, just different bills-budjets-expectations-needs.ect....

problems with AI, returns, lameness ect... just get more pigs, volume, that what im always saying to the "doctors" that work for the company, volume.........

[thoongfoned]

14 hours ago, Robert24 said:

It's interesting though that meat prices have not dropped nearly as much as pig prices. Been to Macro yesterday and they still sell most parts for more than 100 baht. So one option to explore is to sell meat yourself cushion the impact from falling pig prices.

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you only have to look to the company that you sell too. - buy/make a shop/buisness and process the the meat into eats.... then buy a massive wholesale operation and you have,,, macro.... says its all.

brother in law mainly breed chickens,  for fighting and food, also has afew pigs and a couple of ponds of fish. he has a shop that sell chicken,pork and fish food all cooked by him or his wife, they have stopped selling all the other fizzy  drink, packets crisps ect for 3 or 4 years now. dont make loads but they do ok. he grows the rice too, but buys the noodles in...

local mum and dad shops around the villages still sell most cuts of pork from 140 baht, some alot more....

the company that "we" farm for mainly want the premium pig/meat. ie no meds, perfect pigs that grow out in a time frame and are traceable back before  birth, for export.... my understanding is its all sold before it gets AI-ed.....

[thoongfoned]

well its sort of cold here now,  keepin an eye on when and how they shower/clean the pigs because dont want any abortions ect because of the farm/cement being too cold. mums giving milk are eating loads now, even the gilts are eating 10kg (ones on full feed) some sows are eating/offered feed 6 or 7 times a day, just over 2kg at a time, times that by 15 ish mums on full feed and you have to keep an eye on things...

coming to the end of a bad year, stock levels (sows/gilts) have been low all year plus low bithing numbers into wean numbers, higher than normal returns ect.. make for poor reading. had afew good/ok months but also had some very bad months, all in all will be lucky to end on just under 10 wean per sow average, or around 24.3 (psy)  weaned per mum this year. this time last year the psy was just under 28........  with an average of 8.5 extra producing mums in the farm every month.... well at least the "cleaners" have had an easy year, just hope it aint an easy one next year.555

was talking/number crunching the cost of  piglets into 700 head finishing farm with a couple of "doctors" the other week, crazy money per farm/finish pigs..... not surprised these companies have so many people trying to control/drive cost down.

on a fishie note, hearing some horror stories about all these new contact fish farmers around us, some people are having to pay for the feed costs because they can not produce the fish to the company standard, bills up in the hundreds of thousand of baht when people thought they were going to get paid hundreds of thousands..... contact farming aint all gold/easy after all..

[IsaanAussie]

"farming aint all gold/easy after all"

I'm hearing every word, hope things get a bit easier for you.

 

[thoongfoned]

7 hours ago, jompa67 said:

The first 6 months this year was real bad with low birth and weaning rate. It looks like we will end up this year with "all time high". Look at the image from our farm-software. Even if we take into account that our worker have't remove lightweight piglets that died in the first days, its still a lot of piglet. To bad that the price is so low now.

those are some very,very good total born into born alive numbers, post up the wean numbers/kg /days ect when all done. volume will help with the lower price though.... that one at 29 could be a world record.....not sure if they count the dead ones thought, worth checking, never heard of anyone getting more that 22/23.....

born alive weights look a little low,  i would get them to look at the daily feed/body condition, try and up the feed intake mid to late gestations. those low end birth kg ie around 1/1.2kg i bet you find it hard to get a good weaned piglet.... any piglet at that weight the wife will be lucky to get it to 4kg in 17 to 19 day. border line reject/kill piglet as far as company standards go.... minimum kg needed in that time frame 4.5kg. 

i get to look at the stats for many farms (i have to much time on my hands) and a good farm in thailand would average 26/28 psy, many farms average 24/25 psy.  farm with no less then 200 sow.  5.5/6 kg wean average at 19 day. 

looking at your born alive numbers you could well be into the 30 plus a year, if you could acheive those levels all year.....

 

[Snoozy]

You guys are huge operations compared to my wife's struggling mom. They try to raise 20-30 piglets from birth (she has 4 sows) at any given time (2-3 times per year). The feed costs are sinking them faster than a canoe full of lead. I wish I knew more, or could find an inexpensive way to supplement the feed cost. That is what is killing them with the falling price or pork up here in CR. 

[sateuk]

High everyone I have a small pig farm in buriram area and I currently use betagro feed.  Was thinking of switching to perfecq pig food my?  Is how many kg of pig food for a born to 100 kg live weight thanks in advance . It takes me 240 kilos of betagro pig food to avg 100 kg am trying to cut that down thanks

[thoongfoned]

31 minutes ago, sateuk said:

High everyone I have a small pig farm in buriram area and I currently use betagro feed.  Was thinking of switching to perfecq pig food my?  Is how many kg of pig food for a born to 100 kg live weight thanks in advance . It takes me 240 kilos of betagro pig food to avg 100 kg am trying to cut that down thanks

we dont finish the piglets but i have an idea what a good or ok farm can finish a piglet in if it is any help....

my example. piglet weaned day 17 from mum, 5.5kg. then onto feed  too 105kg. good/quick farm 180kg feed. ok/slower 210kg. that is from farms that would be finishing 700 pigs at a time. the target for them is 180kg. or 6 bags for max money or the 210kg 7 bag for a reduced pay day....  evap farms.

if you keep the piglet with the mum till say day 30 and acheive 10 plus plus kg you should be able to drive the feed amounts down. guess 5 bag, or less?  but use more feed with the mum plus down days.

im sure someone will jump in and tell you what they acheive/meat quality wise at present...

add on. all depends on how many piglets per mum per year (psy) if you really want to get total costs down....

 

[IsaanAussie]

2 hours ago, sateuk said:

High everyone I have a small pig farm in buriram area and I currently use betagro feed.  Was thinking of switching to perfecq pig food my?  Is how many kg of pig food for a born to 100 kg live weight thanks in advance . It takes me 240 kilos of betagro pig food to avg 100 kg am trying to cut that down thanks

I used Betagro with my Duroc herd and the average FCR was 2.4 (240Kg) including creep feed thru to finisher. But remember these were pigs we breed and raised, not a selected group of piglets that grow fast with slower ones sold on or culled. I had a few pigs that got close to FCR of 1.8 but not many. There are a lot of factors other than the weight of feed it takes and I would advise you study the complete picture and perhaps compare results with others with the same pigs and similar sty conditions. The main market we had was prepared to pay more for pigs but demanded meat quality and provenance statements.

[thoongfoned]

if you were to breed your own piglets this might help.... drive costs down.

when feeding the mum during here preg term, gestation, try and feed to the body condition of each mum. basic  eg parity 2 onwards healthy condition. 0 - 28 day no more than 2 kg. 29 - 65-70 day 2.5/2.7kg 71 - 105 day 3 kg 106 /- 112 2.5kg 113 -115 2kg. if thin add kg from 45 day if fat reduce ect.... gilts on average will be  a little lower on feed intake, but again if young or thin try and add feed during middle gestation times.  above "should" result in born alive of average kg of 1.5/1.7kg this is a good starting point for future growth. anything that is born at around or under 1.2/1.3 kg will be slow to get to 100kg.... we budjet 1000kg feed for a producing sow a year.

first 6 - 10 or so days drinking milk should result in 200g of growth aday, maybe more on 1,6kg piglets.  from then the gramms should soon start piling on as the mum produces many litres of milk per day. make sure the pigets have access to water, add crep feed from day 5/6 for piglet. i watched the wife sorting piglets yesterday at 15 day old and about 10% were in the 7/8kg range, these then got moved away from the mum to let the smaller brothers and sisters have more of a chance to drink for 2 days. mums were lookng after 10/14 piglets on average, 6 or so mums, do this all the time. when feeding the mum nursing piglets step the feed up say. day 1 1kg day 2 2kg day 3 3kg and so on until day 7 then let them eat as much as they can, some mums in the farm will be eating 12/16 kg a day on full feed, many manage 10 plus kg... even when very hot outside. when the mum is in full feed she can and should produce milk like a dairy cow, approx 20 litres a day... disclaimer i have not measured the milk, just read this figure many times. all above info is from what i see everyday in the wifes farm.

shop bought feed from companies like cp betagro perfect ect,.... will all be good quality and does what it says on the bag, the main reason if i were to change brand would be for cost or deals that are being offered.

if buying in piglets its a lot more of a lottery as you have no history...... but a good source of high end piglets that are food ready would also me a good start to getting to 100 plus kg... i see many on facebook for sale, starting from 1000 baht....

[celticfish]

Sweet Buddha, I finally went through all 174 pages of this thread! 

It's got all the ups and downs of a Thai Lakorn.
Innocence, Fear, Tragedy, Inspiration and Success.

Thank you all who contributed to this wonderful and sobering subject! 

Happy 2018 everyone!

PS - I've been lurking on TV but felt compelled to make my first post here!

[sateuk]

Thank you for the advice I think my problem is that the babies when weaned are not big enough so won't change the food will try to get sows to eat more as currently we give 5 kilo a day to sows with babies and obviously by what people saying that's not enough so thanks again

[thoongfoned]

try and feed the sow in intervals . example of how we feed. 0530 2kg 0700 2kg 1100 2kg then clean the food trough 1600 2kg 1900 2kg 2000 2kg. at 2000hr if the sow is still wanting feed she will get 2kg or 4kg more. its important to keep the trough clean, as i always say to the workers you would not want to eat from a dirty bowl or plate.... dont just pile the feed on at once ect, watch and feed them at the same time everyday and before long they will let you know when and if they want to eat. make sure they have plenty of clean water to drink.

creep feed, if you can try and get the stuff that is like powdered milk this is a good start for get them to taste/ put their nose in the feed, i find around day 15 they also like to eat the sows feed as much as the creep feed.

hope this can be of some help.

[Dean1963]

Maybe slightly off the topic I have 30 sows at present in the long term I would like to just sell piglets but at present I am having to grow some to 100kilo

with the price per kilo in Buriram being around 45baht how can small farmers survive I'm lucky I work overseas but still am now having to subsidise the farm.

with the price so low are they trying to get rid of the small businesses,

does anybody know if this price will be here for a long time if it is nobody can make any money.

Do other people feel the same thanks for any replies in advance

[Robert24]

Maybe slightly off the topic I have 30 sows at present in the long term I would like to just sell piglets but at present I am having to grow some to 100kilo
with the price per kilo in Buriram being around 45baht how can small farmers survive I'm lucky I work overseas but still am now having to subsidise the farm.
with the price so low are they trying to get rid of the small businesses,
does anybody know if this price will be here for a long time if it is nobody can make any money.
Do other people feel the same thanks for any replies in advance

Prices are mainly driven by demand and supply in my opinion. I think the main reason for pig prices to fall drastically is that China stopped importing pigs from Vietnam, Thailand etc. So a big part of demand broke away and additionally I guess supply was still going up (plenty of new farms being built). Now I heard China started to import some pigs again but probably only a small fraction of what they used to import before. In my view they won't go back to the amounts of imports they did before because they have increased their own capacity.

My guess is prices will soon rebound as plenty of farmers are stopping or considering to stop growing pigs which will reduce supply. Maybe it just takes a bit time for enough farmers to stop and supply to go down. But again I have no access to actual data, so this is purely my interpretation of the current situation.

Hope this helps.

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[sateuk]

I'm from buriram area we are getting 50 baht at the moment just enough to survive if goes lower will sell ourselves. Baby pigs here are 1200 baht but people only want 2 or 3 so such a hassle to sell

[sateuk]

Thanks will try feeding the sows like that. I can't give creep feed as we have 2.5 m by 2.5 m pens and mum and babies live together not got a separate area for babies to go eat a design flaw I no now

[Robert24]

I'm from buriram area we are getting 50 baht at the moment just enough to survive if goes lower will sell ourselves. Baby pigs here are 1200 baht but people only want 2 or 3 so such a hassle to sell

If you get 50 baht you are very lucky. Most people sell between 42-45 baht in Issan.

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[thoongfoned]

2 hours ago, sateuk said:

Thanks will try feeding the sows like that. I can't give creep feed as we have 2.5 m by 2.5 m pens and mum and babies live together not got a separate area for babies to go eat a design flaw I no now

that pen size is plenty to put a small 30cm "c-pack" (cement) round feeder for the piglets, they only need to get their nose in to get a taste for the feed. these small feeders start at about 100 baht around the feed shops in the nearest market town to us.

try not to put the feeder under the nipple drinker......