Producers hit the books
Ontario cash croppers have to hit the books for a spray licence, and now the province's pork producers are heading back to school.At last month's Ontario Pork Congress in Stratford, federal Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief announced a $170,000 program to offer a swine medicines course for Ontario's 6,700 pork producers. By 2003, producers will have to be certified to purchase over-the-counter livestock drugs. The program resembles the provincial pesticide certification course, which cash croppers must pass to acquire a licence to purchase farm chemicals.
Calling the program "very forward thinking on behalf of the pork industry," Vanclief said that certification shows consumers at home and abroad the "overall quality assurance food production system that we have in Canada."
While insisting that the program was initiated by industry and not by any residue concerns, Vanclief said: "It's an insurance policy against trade barriers (and) keeps the industry one step ahead of the competition."
Pork producers at the congress agreed. "It's a good idea," said Thomas Lang, a farrow-to-finisher from Baden, "I don't mind giving up the time....We should have done it a long time ago."
Gadshill finisher Sylvia Groenestege didn't begrudge the extra class time either: "To do the medications properly is the most important thing so that the end product is safe for the consumer."
The money for the federal program comes via the Ontario Agricultural Adaptation Council. Vanclief also announced $123,000 to conduct an economic analysis of marketing options proposed by the Ontario Pork Industry Marketing Task Force last March.
Quiet in Quebec
Hard-hit Quebec pork producers (see June 15 Farm & Country Pork) are breathing a little easier, reports Quebec farm weekly Terre de Chez Nous.Quebec pork producers federation president Clément Pouliot says prices have firmed from a low of $125 per ckg to $160, thanks to American export credits for pork bound for Asia.
After strong lobbying of the Quebec government, producers received a $5-per-pig advance to their stabilization program, which has been gutted in Premier Lucien Bouchard's attempt to balance the budget.
While Pouliot cites "less panic" in the Quebec countryside, the cost of production remains at $172 per ckg. Producers had hoped an outside study commissioned by the government would show the cost of production formula used in the price stabilization program was too low, but in fact the firm found it was close to the mark.
A Price Waterhouse study concluded that half of Quebec's 3,000 producers would have to exit the business unless the price or the stabilization program improved.
Battling for your breeding buck
New Canadian pig breeder leaves the nest, but former parent isn't giving up without a fight
BY COLIN LAUGHLAN
REGINA - When Regina-based National Pig Development (Canada) announced its "formal beginning of a new independence" June 18, along with its new name - Genex Swine Group - the stage was set for a fierce two-way battle for domination of Canada's hog genetics market.It wasn't officially billed as the start of a David and Goliath competition, but within days the multinational giant Pig Improvement Company returned fire with PIC Americas announcing plans to expand its Canadian operations.
"They're a competitor now," said Kentucky-based PIC Americas president Greg Bivier, referring to the former PIC subsidiary.
"We're going to come up there and aggressively address the Canadian markets ... from a meat quality standpoint," said Bivier. "We see it as a lot of pent-up demand for the quality products we have."
That kind of tough talk hasn't daunted Genex president Ed Johnson.
He believes his company came out on top in the separation agreement negotiated with NPD/PIC U.K. six months ago.
"PIC is a big organization, the biggest in the world," Johnson said.
"They're going to throw a lot at us. That's fine," he said.
"We have a better pig."
Johnson said under the separation agreement Genex acquired the exclusive rights in Canada for the next 11 years on NPD genetics, which he considers to be among the best in the world for both domestic and export markets.
"Everyone wants lean, healthy meat," he said.
But Bivier emphasized the separation also meant Genex would no longer have access to PIC's research and development, which includes among its 27 worldwide operating companies, over 23,000 genetic nucleus herds, 22 PhD scientists, and 21 universities engaged in PIC research.
"We agreed to give them some final genetic improvement. They're not getting any further genetic improvement from PIC. They're responsible now for improving it on their own," said Bivier.
"What is going to win is good products and the right kind of support for our customers. We're prepared to make these kind of investments," Bivier said.
Among those investments, Bivier said PIC would establish a new nucleus herd that will be twice the size of Genex's prime breeding stock.
"It will be similar to other nucleus farms we have around the world, and those are on the order of 2,000 to 2,500 sow," said Bivier.
While PIC has not yet announced where the new herd will be located, Bivier said "it's likely" the site will be in Canada.
He confirmed, however, that "the office will be located in Alberta," prompting industry speculation that the nucleus farm will be somewhere in western Canada.
"The land will probably be purchased in the next couple months," he said.
"You are going to see a lot of infrastructure pretty quickly."
Not to be outdone, Johnson said Genex is also expanding its nucleus with plans to add another unit next year.
"We currently have two nucleus units of 540 sows at each unit," Johnson said. "We're going to be building in 1999 another nucleus. It'll be 540 or 600 sow. That will bring us up over 1,600," he said.
Johnson admitted that by world standards Genex is a small player, but he is confident his company will increase its Canadian market share to over 40 per cent in the next five years.
"In Canada we're going to double our sales in the next three years. That's guaranteed.
"We've been sold out for the last five years, and probably for the next five to 10 years we'll be sold out.
"It's not huge dollars, but even on our small basis that could be $40 or $50 million annually," Johnson said.
One of the big challenges for Johnson will be raising the money required for Genex's research program. Here he hopes to exploit international markets where demand is consistent with genetic traits already in the possession of Genex.
For example, he cited Brazil as being three times the Canadian market. "That affords us straight off the opportunity to export, which gives us more money to do research and development back here in Canada," he said.
And where that leads the company will largely be up to John Cosgrove, Genex's recently acquired vice-president of research and development.
"We will partner with academic institutions and government research organizations that will support genetic research in pig production associated with our genotypes," said Cosgrove.
He said Genex just signed an agreement with the University of Alberta's Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutritional Sciences "so that all the research on swine ... will be on Genex genotypes.
"We'll also in the future be involved with the University of Guelph."
Cosgrove said Genex "will also be involved with research that produces intellectual property that includes biotechnological approaches.
"If you really want to dream, the possibilities are endless."
Taking the P from pollution
The enzyme phytase, which puts more phosphorus into the pig and less into the environment, is now available in pelletsPerth County Co-op is hoping that the current concerns about the environment will give it a leg up in the hog feeding market.
Last month Perth Co-op announced that it had installed new feed treating technology at its Mitchell plant. The new technology, the first in the province, allows the enzyme phytase to be applied to popular pelleted feeds. Previously, phytase could only be added to premixes and mash feeds.
Because the enzyme makes phosphorous in the diet more available in the pig's gut, total phosphorous in pig rations can be reduced, and less ends up in manure.
Phytase is substituted for phosphorous in the ration and "is a wash on cost," says Andy Lennox, BASF technical sales representative. The product is of value to the farmer only because it reduces the phosphorous in manure.
Lennox says BASF introduced its line of phytase products, called Naturphos, in 1994. Sales languished until 18 months ago when manure management came sharply into the public focus.
The introduction of nutrient management plans have spawned interest in phytase, says Chris Brown, Ontario agriculture ministry soil and crop adviser, Oxford county. Farmers will find phytase a real benefit if they want to be able to spread manure without applying phosphorous, such as in high-phosphorous fields and in areas that are susceptible to erosion or are close to watercourses.
Phosphorous has the most erosion potential of the major fertility elements. It is tied with the soil and moves with it into water courses where it causes algae blooms which use up the oxygen and kill fish.
Brown thinks that probably half of swine operations have soil levels approaching 60 parts per million (ppm), considered to be excessive. Most susceptible are fields close to barns. More than 30 ppm is considered to be high.
It's likely that fields closest to barns will have high to excessive levels of phosphorous.
Rob Templeman, provincial crop specialist for Perth county, says phytase use "has merit, especially in these times when we are so sensitive to what is happening in the ground water. Farmers are being watched closely.
"Anything we can do to reduce the amount (of phosphorous) going through is a plus."
Don Hilborn, Woodstock-based nutrient management specialist for the Ontario agriculture ministry, says farmers who use phytase should be able to spread manure over a smaller land area because the effluent has a lower concentration of phosphorous. He says getting society to accept the technology's benefit will be a challenge. As well, it will be difficult to convince a municipality that a farmer will continue to use the nutrient reducing enzyme in the long-term. - Don Stoneman
Brits near 30 pigs per sow
Twenty-eight pigs per sow per year for three years? Sparkling numbers like this were enough to put Yorkshire pig producer J.C. Lister over the top in the annual U.K. Top Farm sweepstakes.Each year, PIC and Intervet U.K. present awards to the nation's top pig producers, from data provided by U.K. recording companies Easicare and Pigtales, which have 130,000 sows on their books.
Lister's 570-sow unit in Nottinghamshire won both Best Indoor Herd and Best Long-Term Performance over three years, marking a first-ever double-winner for the competition. For 1997, the unit reared an average 29.6 pigs per sow per year, posting a staggering 28-pig three-year average. See High on the Hog.
What's the secret to this exceptional performance? Richard Lister puts it down to the high standards of his staff, headed up by unit manager David Wedgewood and his team of six. He has had the same staff for three years. Health control is tight, with staff showering in and out.
The unit's performance is particularly noteworthy, given the large number of sows. Invariably, winners have few sows. Stock are PIC crossbred F1s mated to very high-pointed Large White boars.
Output is a team effort and a credit to unit manager Wedgewood's pig and people management skills. The Yorkshire-based Lister, with 2,500 sows on all the family operations, has overall management control.
Similar performance awards inevitably are dismissed by some critics as seven-day wonders, but the Lister operation is certainly not a "one-off" affair. Performance has been exceptional over three years. Last year the farm placed second in the Pigtales awards with 26.8 pigs per sow, versus 25.5 the previous year when many sows were purebreds.
Sows normally receive two services, the first natural (Large White), the second by AI (NPD 250) on two consecutive days. Wedgewood prefers sows to be served when things are quiet. With a 90-per cent farrowing rate and a farrowing index of 2.49, it's hard to disagree.
Served sows have to have their feed cut back to 2.5 kg per day after service and are housed close to the boars for the first five and a half weeks after service, to cover the critical first-return period.
Lister has a preg-tester, but only uses it on suspect sows. At 80 days, in-pig feed level is increased to three kg per day up to the last day before farrowing, when it is reduced to two kg per day.
As well as the dry sow yards, the unit also has a shed containing 28 cubicles, used as a safety valve.
Replacement gilts are put in groups of 11 at service (230 days), which allows one dropout, keeping a group size of 10 through to farrowing. A dry sow ration of 14.7-per cent CP is fed at the rate of 2.5 kg per gilt per day.
What comes in has to go out, and sows are culled on average after six litters.
Sows and gilts farrow down mostly in cantilever slatted farrowing pens. Rubber mats are placed in the farrowing pens just before farrowing and are removed five days after farrowing.
Sows and gilts are fed an 18-per cent CP lactation ration twice per day, using the Stotfold feed scale, to a maximum of around 10 kg at 18 days. Shredded newspapers are used for bedding.
Two creep lamps are used. One is in place all the time in the corner of the pen; the other, a back lamp, is just used at farrowing. Piglets are teethed shortly after farrowing, and navels treated with iodine.
It's often said that a successful unit revolves, or evolves, around the service house. Numbers born are running at 12.5, and with a farrowing rate of 90 per cent that particular department is doing an excellent job. The vast majority of dry and in-pig sows are housed in straw-bedded kennels in groups of four with a scrape-through dunging passage. Kennels are cleaned out twice a week.
Sows are batched according to size and fed with AZA dump feeders that drop feed into the kennelled sleeping area. Weaned sows are fed to appetite, about four kg per day, to just after service, receiving a home-mixed 14-per cent CP dry sow ration made at Lister's mill and transported to the farm in the company's articulated blower wagon.
Piglets are left for three days before being tailed and ironed; gilts are also tattooed. Gleptosil is the preferred injectable iron source. Piglets get A-One Natural start from Day Two to Day 10, when A-One Starter creep is introduced.
Weaning takes place at 21 days with piglets averaging six kg liveweight. The farrowing units are power washed out with a detergent and disinfectant.
Pre-weaning mortality is an exceptional 6.5 per cent. "We have excellent staff in the farrowing house who run a very tight ship," explains Wedgewood. "Also, the sows are very placid. A lot of this is due to the fact that the dry sows are 'walked-through' every day and so are used to regular human contact."
Stock are vaccinated against E. coli, erysipelas and parvo. The result is no mean feat: an average 11.7 piglets reared per litter from 12.5 born alive.
At weaning, piglets are split-sexed and housed in conventional slatted flat decks (NEACO and Tri bar flooring) in groups of 14. They are fed A-One Special Flat Deck meal plus water in troughs for four days, followed by a second ration to two and a half weeks, and then a third.
Pigs are housed in first-stage flat decks for 25 days, before moving to the second-stage flat decks.
Gilts move off the unit at an average weight of 35 kg. Entires remain to be finished on slats on a home-mixed 20-per cent CP ration and leave the unit as a slaughter weight of 95 kg.
U.K.-based Stuart Lumb brings 36 years of pig experience to the keyboard
U.S. pork exports jump
U.S. pork exports were up 48 per cent first quarter 1998 compared to January-April 1997, according to the National Pork Producers Council.Based on products weight, exports to the Russian Federation were up 154 per cent; Mexico, up 95 per cent (see below); Hong Kong, up 40 per cent; Japan, up 29 per cent; and Canada, up 22 per cent.
The value of pork products in first quarter 1998 was US$367 million, an increase of US$62 million over the same period 1997. "If export sales continue at this pace throughout the year," says Glenn Grimes, University of Missouri agriculture economist, "they will take an additional two per cent of production off the domestic market." Last year, exports represented six per cent of U.S. pork production to a value exceeding US$1 billion.
Intriguing entrails, the straight poop
Ontario farmers at their wits' end with the weather forecast these days might just be ready for wacky weatherman-cattleman Ken Porter's somewhat unorthodox forecasting technique.No high-tech weather stations for Porter - just a nice fresh pig spleen if you please. Porter, who runs 33 cows with wife Joan at Fort Assiniboine, Alta., claims 70-per cent accuracy for his pig spleen weather forecasts, according to Farm Show newspaper.
Porter says he learned the practice from Ukrainians. Spleens come from his own butcher hogs and local farmers' herds. The donor pig must be healthy and have lived outdoors.
Using a high-tech variation on the original method of laying the spleen out on a white cloth, Porter makes a photocopy of it, and gives his forecast based on the outline. Porter, who has been giving the "Porter Spleen Weather Forecast" for 10 years, forecasts highs and lows by analyzing fluctuations in the spleen width. Precipitation forecasts come from analyzing the thickness of the edge of the spleen, which he says can also indicate how long the winter will be. The process can take up to two hours.
Forecasts are local because the pigs are local. The farmer says his six-month forecasts are generally within plus or minus five degrees, and his success rating is 70 per cent.
For those times when he misses the mark, farmers rarely claim on Porter's 100-per cent money-back guarantee - it's free to begin with, he quips.
The straight poop
Pork producers often get fingered for watercourse pollution, but mounting evidence in urban areas indicates the felon might be...Fido.In the wake of high fecal coliform counts in streams in North Virginia, a recent Washington Post article quotes a water resources planner saying that an estimated 12,000 dogs are depositing 5,000 pounds of do-do in the watershed of a local creek. Ruling out livestock and people, the official says that "all the circumstantial evidence in the world point(s) to dogs."
It appears that irresponsible pet owners of America's estimated 53 million dogs simply aren't stooping and scooping - despite efforts from dog advocacy groups who have issued an educational pamphlet entitled "The Straight Poop."
As farmers near the Lake Huron shoreline have discovered, identifying the source of such pollution is an imprecise science. But Professor George Simmons from Virginia Tech, who is undertaking a genetics study to find the cause, doesn't rule out the dogs: "In urban neighbourhoods...it's like having thousands of people in a small area defecating without any sewage treatment.
"The scary thing is, what are you going to do about it? What if we're right and it turns out to be doggy-do?"
Pork's poor rating
Sensational headlines and dead pigs in mailboxes don't help, but when it comes to the environment, Canadian pork producers are less popular than ever.In an Agriculture Canada-Environics poll, 26 per cent of Ontarians picked hog farming as the least environmental part of agriculture, reports Western Producer. In a similar survey last year, 21 per cent chose hog farming.
Across Canada, the trend is the same. Dissatisfaction with pork's environmental record more than doubled in the Prairie provinces - indicating the honeymoon period with the pork industry there may be over. In Quebec, already-high disapproval with the hog industry dropped from 61 to 54 per cent.
The random survey of 1,556 Canadians revealed a mistrust of both government and industry as reliable sources of environmental information. Environmental groups scored much better.