2013 Central Indiana Pork Conference Report

I want to throw in a brief report about the 2013 Central Indiana Pork Conference held February 6. As I was the site host I did have to bounce around a bit from time to time, particularly in the morning, but I'll provide as much of a summary as I can. Also, pdf's of most of the presentations are up on the Clinton County Extension Office website.

Paul Clouser from Indiana Packers was the first presenter and this is the one I missed the most of. However I did catch a few items which caught my attention. First, they wanted to congratulate producers for helping them by providing higher quality animals to their plant. Since DDGS have become a substantial portion of swine rations Iodine Values and carcass quality have been a big industry issue and they had far less of a problem with this recently than they did a year or two ago.

He wanted to caution farmers on several aspects of production. One, which I intend to use in my PQA programs from now on, is that if you have a broken needle in an animal, euthanize it. My suggestion, so long as it meets all withdrawal standards, would be either to process it for your own use at home or send it to a processor and donate the meat to a food bank. However they don't want these animals at the plant. He also wanted farmers to be aware that as much of their business involves overseas markets, they should be aware of and follow IPC's corporate residue limits which in some cases are more stringent than US standards.

The Industry Outlook provided by Purdue Ag Economist Chris Hurt focused, unsurprisingly, on feed prices. He made the "official" prediction that US corn prices will experience the largest drop in history, $2.50 by next summer. Of course prices will still be above $5.00. He considers this to be a "sweet spot" where both grain farmers and pork producers should be able to turn a profit. Current stocks are short so this will be very weather-driven but he sees a good possibility of a long, slow decline with, if it looks like the crop is good, a rapid price drop in early July. With decent weather the next few years he thinks a long-term price outlook is for corn in the $5 range and soybeans around $11. With bad weather it's hard to tell where things might go. Another drought could drive corn over $10 and soybeans to $20. Ultimately, he believes that if the weather cooperates, the industry should see a return to profitability by the second quarter of 2013.

Brian Martin and Wes Lack from MP3 farms discussed a new sow unit they recently installed which uses an automated electronic feeding system and houses sows in groups rather than using gestation stalls. They provided a great deal of information on how the system works, how they train farm employees as well as gilts to use the system and other aspects which I won't detail here. They also operate an older sow unit which uses gestation stalls so they were able to provide some interesting comparative date over production in the two systems. Very briefly, while sow mortality is slightly higher with this system, overall performance of animals in the two systems has been very comparable when looking at areas such as pigs/sow/year and lbs/sow/year. One area which doesn't show up in the numbers is that they said the sows in this system are very easy to handle and work; very calm and easygoing.

I'll use their talk as a jumping-off point to editorialize a little. I've been at several programs recently including those sponsored by the National Pork Board and animal handling and housing is a prominent theme. Despite research which shows that sows get along fine in gestation stalls and other similar production-related issues, we live in a new age. At one time in this country, people were primarily worried about having enough to eat. They progressed from that to a concern over the quality of what they eat. Today many people are concerned with how animals are raised. In any business where you're producing a product for consumers, consumer preferences is a driver. Animal handling standards, housing systems, etc., should definitely be considered in animal operations. It's a basis for the Pork Quality Assurance (PQA Plus) program which almost all Pork Producers receive certification through. If I'm talking to a farmer who's considering building a new breeding/gestation/production unit, I would urge him or her to strongly consider a group housing system for sows. At this point I wouldn't advise spending a lot of money to convert an existing facility but for new construction I think farmers need to give it serious thought. The industry has been heading in this direction for some time now and I see no indication that this trend will stop.

Aflatoxin was a serious problem in corn this year and farmers know that this was a big issue in feeding hogs. Brian Richert from the Purdue Animal Sciences Department discussed issues related to this. A portion of this was related to levels at which hogs can tolerate Aflatoxin, strategies and methods of maintaining feed quality and preventing toxin development. I was more interested when he started talking about how some approved flowables - products added to grain to prevent clumping due to moisture - also can substantially mitigate the impacts of Aflatoxin in feed by serving as binders. In this area most farmers were able to blend feed enough to keep Aflatoxin levels down to acceptable levels but if you want to plan for a year where this may be next to impossible, Brian's presentation would be a very good starting point to start looking into these binders as another option.

This was a very good program. I was disappointed that numbers were down this year and will be looking at ways to bring this back up next year. For those who attended, thanks for coming and a big thank you goes out to the Rossville FFA Chapter who provided lunch.