Breeding new business
"Somebody is going to end up standing on the road surrounded by a bunch of boars!" That's former OSI director Richard Ross colourfully describing how time is running out on Ontario Swine Improvement's (OSI) boar stud at Woodstock. No doubt the swine industry has enough political clout to stave off Ontario Realty's eviction plans for the stud until a replacement barn can be set up.
But this is not the first crisis surrounding artificial insemination (AI) at OSI, the organization formed when governments abandoned their hands-on efforts to keep Ontario genetics competitive. Some directors say last year's dust-up over whether OSI should be in the AI business at all squandered resources and paralyzed the organization.
The AI boondoggle really symbolizes the bigger question of where OSI itself is going. The pork board, which provides some of the funding, not surprisingly favours emphasizing the needs of commercial producers.
Pork board director Cliff Howse was justifiably proud of the initiatives in carcass appraisal research during his tenure as OSI chair last year. Unfortunately, Howse's hasty exit with roughly a month and a half left in his one-year term only raised more questions about OSI's viability.
Breeders who use OSI's performance testing program want cheaper fees and they have been voting with their feet by leaving the program in droves in recent years.
Earlier this year, former OSI vice-chairman Warren Stein made a valiant effort to carve out a role for OSI as the heart of an innovative communications infrastructure referred to as the "big picture." To Stein's and OSI's credit he has continued to play an active role in this project on OSI's behalf, even though it is now territory that the industry has decided belongs to the pork board because it got there first with world-class electronic technology.
True, OSI has spearheaded valuable research, but that's not enough to keep it alive, because that role could easily be assumed by others in the future. Recently, current OSI chair Henry deWolde got to the heart of the matter with his unveiling of a vision that he calls "target hogs."
The idea is to pull all sectors together, including breeders, commercial producers and packers, in a giant effort to create and market hogs designed for specific purposes. It's an idea Stein has described as "bigger than all of us."
Ontario's commercial producers and breeders have been among the most innovative and competitive in the world. But large multinational breeding companies are innovative and competitive, too.
In some cases the multinationals have simply out-marketed local breeders. But another strength is the multinationals' success in getting large numbers of producers to work co-operatively to meet the demands of end users.
When times are good, Ontario pork producers can prosper using the same high-quality genetics that the multinationals supply to other farmers around the world. It's those other times, all too familiar to industry veterans, when a uniquely superior Ontario pig might make a difference.
Excellence in both genetics and marketing requires large volumes. If Ontario is to be a world leader, a lot of commercial producers and our notoriously self-reliant breeders would have to surrender some independence to generate the volumes needed for the target hog concept.
Reaction to target hogs in the coming weeks will no doubt determine OSI's fate. It will also give us a vision of the future of the Ontario pork industry.
Don't look for a letup in your competition across the Atlantic. Despite the hog cholera that has ravaged Holland and Belgium, the overall European hog inventory is up, according to Reuters.
Dutch and Belgian pig numbers each dropped by over half a million pigs, but gains elsewhere more than made up the difference, according to recently-released European Union statistics for April, 1997.
Across the EU, pig numbers rose almost two-million to 17 million, compared to April, 1996. The French, German and Danish herds all rose by 400,000 or more. While finisher pig supplies will drop up to 30 per cent in Holland and Belgium, overall European slaughter pig numbers should hold steady.
EU exports to Japan, following the embargo on Taiwan's hoof-and-mouth-stricken pigs, should help keep prices healthy.
Protein from the soybean plant is a lot cheaper than protein from the
feed plant, and U.S. researchers are hoping to save feed costs for farmers
weaning pigs early.
Gary Allee, University of Missouri nutritionist, tells Pork'97 magazine that farmers feeding early-weaned pigs could save up to US$350 per ton on a phase 1 nursery diet, and maintain performance, by substituting animal-based proteins such as fish meal and spray-dried blood plasma with plant-based proteins in the ration.
Allee says he has had good results with a combination of spray-dried blood plasma, lactose and soybean meal. Pigs showed no allergic response, a possible risk with feeding soy to young animals.
In University of Nebraska trials, Segregated Early Weaning pigs fed a diet with 10-per-cent crude soybean meal at 46.5-per-cent protein gained 1.2 pounds a day, with 1.6 feed conversion.
Extruded soybean meal, which replaced some of the blood plasma, offers a two-thirds savings in lysine costs. While it is less likely to cause an allergic response than regular soybean meal, it is more expensive. Nebraska nutritionist Duane Reese tells the magazine that a 15-per-cent extruded soy meal diet can be fed three to four days after weaning, and then regular meal substituted when pigs hit 20 pounds. High-health pigs will give the best response, he says.
Still to be determined: any long-term digestive damage from feeding
soybeans to early-weaned pigs.
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U.S. swinestakes go down to the wire
Progress marches on in the Canadian swine industry, but it appears competitors to the south have made it a race down the stretch.
Between 1989 and 1994, the latest years available from the Pigtales International Review of the top 10 per cent of Canadian herds on record, the number of Canadian pigs weaned per litter rose from 9.65 to 10.06; litters weaned per sow per year from 2.4 to 2.43; and pigs weaned per sow per year from 23.12 to 24.39.
U.S. producers, who have traditionally lagged in performance and genetics, kept pace, improving from 9.72 pigs weaned per litter in 1989 to 9.82 in 1994; from 2.42 litters weaned per sow per year to 2.46; and from 23.48 pigs weaned per sow per year to 24.09.
Wellesley, Ont.-based veterinarian Doug MacDougald's rosy figures for sow performance among 60 customers reflect national trends over the past eight years.
Last quarter, MacDougald's customers averaged 10.4 pigs born alive per sow, 9.3 weaned per sow, and 2.43 litters per mated female per year. Herds averaged 22.6 pigs per mated female per year, versus 23.4 in the U.S., according to PigChamp U.S. numbers.
"Having average productivity on the north side of 22 is a good indicator of where productivity and efficiencies are and where they're going," says MacDougald.
"Over the past several years, it's clearly trended up. I see nothing that's going to change that."
MacDougald points out an "inescapable treadmill" whatever the industry:
Get better or die.
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As well as a rich source of nutrition, pigs may soon provide mankind with the most precious gift of all: life.
The Western Producer reports that research scientists at Halifax's Dalhousie University are working on pig-to-human organ transplants.
Dr. Vivian McAlister, who is working with the Nova Scotia Agricultural College in Truro, N.S., tells The Producer that demand for transplants is so great that people have died waiting for donors.
Pig organs have been used short-term for patients, but scientists must overcome the human body's natural rejection.
On the livestock breeding end, they are looking for pigs with organs
most compatible with the human system. There's also work on transplanting
pig bone marrow into humans, to "fool" the body into accepting the animal's
organ.
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PST makes bigger litters, study says
With Canadian health officials still pondering approval of bovine somatotropin
(BST), comes news of new benefits from its swine equivalent, porcine somatotropin
(PST)
.
Like BST, a synthetic hormone which enhances milk production, PST enhances muscle growth in pigs. Research sponsored by American producers, however, reveals that PST may also improve pig performance when injected in pregnant sows.
According to The Western Producer, the Washington-based National Pork Producers Council reports that PST injected twice daily in bred gilts resulted in increased litter numbers, increased pig weights, lower abortions, and improved growth and carcass quality of offspring.
An increase of one pig per litter puts US$50 in a producer's pocket,
the NPPC says. Furthermore, treating pigs in utero could be more economical
than treating them individually.
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