Value-added calves
By DON STONEMAN
Past attempts to market fully preconditioned calves to feedlots have been generally unsuccessful. But Ken Bridge, with Ripley-Huron Veterinary Clinic, says the Ontario Premium-Added Calves (OPAC), program "is an idea whose time has come."OPAC is an extension of a similar Bruce county program which had some success last year. Bridge says it is "the same but different" from preconditioning programs that faltered in the past, with the difference being in the marketing. Preconditioning involves treating calves, weaning them from their mothers and introducing them to feed several weeks before they are sold.
Calf sellers are looking for a five-cent-a-pound bonus for their animals.
Past programs cost producers time and money, and treated calves failed to bring a better return at the sales barn, so they were abandoned. Bridge says OPAC program protocols are certified by either a veterinarian or an experienced person who has been deemed "qualified" to certify the procedures by the committee which runs the program.
Bridge says this program can be part of the industry's response to consumer's concerns about quality assurance and safety of their meat, since preconditioned calves should be less prone to illness and less likely to require treatment in the feedlot.
Certified calves will be accompanied to the sales yard by a certificate proving that certain procedures have been performed: vaccinations, dehorning and castration.
The cattle certified for this program will be sold at two western Ontario sales this fall: Nov. 14 in Keady, Bruce county, and Nov. 22 in Brussels, in Huron.
"We don't expect to see people breaking down the doors" for these cattle, Bridge says, but some farmers who are following the program are already making private sales. "That's great," he says. It's a sign that buyers think the treated calves have value.
Numbers of cattle will be critical, Bridge says. Reasonably high numbers are necessary so that calves can be presorted into groups large enough for feeders and order buyers to find attractive.
A killed wide-spectrum vaccine must be administered three weeks before weaning. Along with vaccinations, castration and dehorning, cattle will also be deloused, dewormed, and weaned from their mothers.
Farmers will do as much as they can on their own in order to keep costs down. Then a certifier will be called in to make sure procedures were followed properly.
"It's new ground," Bridge says. "Some sales barns run prevaccinated sales. That's good too, but we think that bunk adjustment is important. Anything that will improve the health of calves is good.
"We've known for years it was a good idea. We've wondered why it hasn't worked better."
The committee that operates the OPAC program has members from across the industry and is chaired by Ontario agriculture ministry veterinarian Neil Anderson, Fergus.
"We have the health end nailed down," Bridge says. "We may need to do some work on the genetic end. A lot of it is an education process."
He says farmers can get extra value from their calves if they can guarantee the breeding behind them. For example, some feeders want carcasses weighing between 720 and 750 pounds, with only 10 to 15 per cent grading AAA for marbling and the rest AA.
There's room with this program to get information back to the cow-calf producer on how the carcasses graded.
"We want to know how our carcasses grade, and if we can make some more money doing it, let's do it," Bridge says.
The success of a program like OPAC depends on active local cow-calf clubs, he says. There's a lot of interest in the program in the Bruce-Huron area, but at press time, there was no estimate on the number of producers and cattle that would be involved with the two sales, he says.
Bridge knows that his clinic's clients who took part in the program last year have signed up again. "We are cautiously optimistic," he says.
Cattlemen get behind mandatory identification
A mandatory national identification system for beef cattle could be in place in 16 months, says Dennis Laycraft, executive director of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association.Last month, the CCA approved a business plan that aims to put a national identification system in place for Jan. 1, 1999. The first step, says Laycraft, is to put tags in the ears of 100,000 cattle as a test for the system, to ensure that it works. Only then, he says, will the industry ask that the program be made mandatory. Laycraft stresses that provincial directors of the CCA will make the final decision on the acceptability of the system.
Under the business plan, the CCA's certified agents will make and sell the tags to farmers, whose names and addresses will be recorded. The recording system will track animals until they are either slaughtered or exported. Tracebacks can be conducted two ways: either from the last owner backwards, or from the original producer of an animal forward to its current owner.
The cost of these tags is still uncertain. Laycraft says alternatives examined so far range from $2 to $6 per head. Two dollars "isn't much more" than it costs to put tags in animals' ears now, he says. "Before the system can be made mandatory, it must be proven that it will work, that it is low cost and that it is reliable. Otherwise, "we will not advocate a mandatory system."
Some farmers will be interested in adding information to the eartag, such as seed stock operators. But "if they don't want to keep records, that's fine," he says. "We only need a very small amount of information for this system to work."
Laycraft notes that tagging isn't unprecedented. In the 1970s, all females were tagged during a brucellosis eradication program.
If Canada can demonstrate that diseases can be traced back to their source, "then we can become the preferred supplier" to out-of-country consumers. "With 54 per cent of our product being exported, this is of prime concern to everyone in our industry," he says.
The eartag system will be "a preventative measure to make sure the Canadian cattle industry continues to be as pure as it already is."
Canada has already eliminated virtually all of the reportable diseases, Laycraft says, including tuberculosis and brucellosis, and Canada remains foot-and-mouth-disease free. Canadian beef also remains clear of pesticides, a problem which plagued the Australian industry a few years ago.
If disease outbreaks do take place in Canada, the eartag traceback system will allow the disease to be isolated, contained and eradicated, while maintaining trade with client nations. - DS
U.S. sowherds put piggy out to pasture
By ROBERT IRWIN
During the past four years, the grazier philosophy has influenced growing numbers of North American dairymen. Could pork producers be next?Graziers are devoted to sustainable agriculture. They manage pastures intensively and invest little in buildings or machinery. They insist their approach is environmentally superior and their minimal overheads make it easier to survive hardship like the milk price downturn currently challenging American producers.
At first glance, outdoor methods would seem to be a leap back to the dark ages of pork production. However, Greg Gunthorp, of Lafrange, Indiana, says he and his family are proof the grazier philosophy has a future in pork production, despite the apparent success of 100,000-sow confinement- based integrators and a worldwide migration to swine confinement buildings.
"I've taken the building manufacturer's profit and the feed salesman out of my pay cheque; the only variable in the picture is the packer's ability or desire to buy all his hogs from half a dozen producers." Five years ago, Gunthorp, a fourth-generation pasture pork producer, bought a 65- acre farm with a slatted floor finishing barn on it. He rents another 35 acres.
He has replaced costly feed storage and harvesting equipment with highly specialized electric fencing, black water pipe and a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle. Gunthorp says outdoor pigs are healthier and, unlike his confinement hogs, have virtually no death loss.
He emphasizes there is a big difference between an outdoor operation which simply exchanges feed costs for building costs, and his pastured operation. Gunthorp moves his animals on a carefully plotted regimen through a variety of perennial and annual crops to manage herd nutrition.
His records show that by selectively grazing about 75 market pigs per acre on high-protein corn, he achieves up to 2,000 pounds of gain per acre with little mineral and no protein supplement cost. He sells most pigs at weights up to 287 pounds to Indiana Packers with no grade discounts. He even raises some to 318 pounds, which bring a small discount.
Ed Barrie, Stratford-based Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) swine systems and behaviour specialist, says grazing a few animals instead of growing a valuable crop on land costing $5,000 per acre in his area doesn't cash flow. Weather is another deterrent Barrie thinks is easily overlooked in light of recent moderate winters.
"When was the last time you had a winter in Ontario?" he challenges.
Barrie says one state-of-the-art confinement facility in his area has managed to reduce finishing barn labour to a ratio of one person per 10,000 hogs. "That's the kind of efficiency you're competing with," he says.
However, former OMAFRA swine specialist Richard Smelski, now technical services manager with Ralston Purina, thinks the idea could work on the kind of sandy land found in Ontario's tobacco belt. "The unfortunate part is we're not even trying it in Ontario," Smelski says.
Smelski, long known as an industry innovator, has been building a file on outdoor swine technology for several years. "If I was 25 years younger and seriously wanted to get into the pig business, that would be an area that I would look at and put the dollars into turn-over of pigs rather than concrete."
Smelski says this is actually the same strategy used by large American integrators. "Murphy Farms is not investing in bricks and mortar; they're investing in the pig."
He has seen the concept work in Michigan and notes it has become increasingly popular in Britain, where there is heavy emphasis on animal welfare. Smelski suggests the animals produced from such a system might represent a new niche market - something like barley-fed hogs for the Japanese market.
"Maybe it's our way to break the European market," he conjectures. Another benefit of grazier technology that Smelski has seen in Michigan is market flexibility.
"Whether they have one farrowing or two farrowings depends on the market and on what the corn-hog ratio does. They're true marketers."
Gunthorp is skipping fall farrowings this year but will farrow 200 gilts in spring. He can take the winter off because he doesn't have to contend with the high mortgage payments faced by conventional operators.
Smelski suggests even if Ontario ignores grazier technology now, it's something which could surface in future if gene splicing makes it possible to meet an animal's complete nutritional needs with a single crop.
So who's signing up for Signature Pork?
In August, 1996, Maple Leaf Foods launched Signature Pork in a well- publicized effort to boost the number and quality of pigs shipped to its Burlington, Ontario, plant. The move was heralded by Ontario Pork whose chairman, Carl Moore, predicted the program "will increase our competitiveness and secure our position as world leaders in pork production."Is anyone signing up for Signature?
Bruce Christie, general marketing manager, agribusiness alliances for Maple Leaf's Shur Gain division, says "we're very pleased Signature is right on target." However, he points out that hog numbers haven't increased significantly yet.
Christie speculates that a number of producers have been leaving the industry. Based on a small sampling of participants, whose names were provided to Farm & Country by Christie, it also appears that most waited until this spring or summer before taking the plunge, meaning the full effect of their production may not have hit the market yet.
Christie says this month two new 1,250-sow, three-site production units signed up taking advantage of a $40-per-sow grant available under the Signature Plus feature. Both plan to double production in a year.
"That seems to be fairly normal for individuals to get up to 1,250 sows which gives them 500 hogs a week during the first year and then, when they feel comfortable with it, to double, which gives them 1,000 hogs a week," Christie observes.
Francis Feeney, of Dublin, already used Shur Gain in his 90-sow farrow-to- finish operation when he signed up for Signature. "If I had questions, we could always get answers from the Shur Gain organization," explains Feeney, who has raised pigs since 1983.
Feeney says another attraction to Signature was the fact his local trucker takes pigs to Maple Leaf. He says this makes it easy for him to ship Sunday nights.
Like many others in Huron county, Feeney is in the midst of barn construction. He is building a segregated early weaning (SEW) barn which will allow him to increase his herd to 190 sows.
His eventual goal is 380 sows. He hasn't yet applied for the $40 grant under Signature but says he is considering extending his current Signature agreement to the five years required for grant eligibility.
"For the first two to three weeks we were on Signature, we got less than the pool but we're over the pool now," Feeney observes.
Larry Zehr calculates the advantage at $.02 per kg. Zehr, with his wife June, brother Larry and his wife Sharon, operates Streamline Swine, a 14- day wean-to-finish operation, turning out about 8,000 hogs per year near Woodstock. Streamline signed up with Signature in January.
Early weans are PIC and NPD genetics produced by Keith and Linda Snider. PIC and NPD are two of Signature's preferred breeding stock suppliers. Thames Bend Farms Ltd., Tavistock, and Shamrock Genetics, Shedden, were recently added to the preferred list, bringing the total to six.
Most Signature participants contacted by Farm & Country aren't using suppliers on the list. However Zehr, who is also a swine specialist for B-W Feed and Seed, New Hamburg, calculates using the right genetics means 40 per cent of Streamline's production fetches the $1.50-per-pig loin eye premium offered by Signature.
Until this year, the Sniders were part of the now-defunct New Fashion Pork which was exporting production to Minnesota. In the past, some industry officials have blamed weaner pig exports to the U.S. for a shortage of pigs available to Ontario packers.
One of the chief attractions Zehr sees in Signature is the risk management component. "It's simpler than going through a broker," says Zehr, who pays $0.75 per hog to lock in a future price.
Bruce Clark and his wife Beth, of Shaty Bay, near Orillia, also use the forward contract component of Signature. But according to Bruce, the chief reason they chose Signature after researching other marketing options was "we felt they had their act together."
The Clarks have produced pork for 23 years. Recently, they switched from their 100-sow farrow-to-finish operation to a 6,200-hog unit which finishes pigs from Quality Swine's SEW unit.
Like other Signature participants interviewed, the Clarks were receiving a $1-per-pig bonus for using Shur Gain feed. However, they only purchase premix to be eligible. They grow their own corn requirements. "I buy soybean meal wherever I get the best deal," Clark says.
Maple Leaf has no plans to increase cash paid to participants beyond the original structure laid out when the program was first launched, but Christie says some innovative value-added services are on the way. Signature Tracking is one such feature.
It is a database which will include carcass information from all Signature participants. "It will benchmark a producer with the top five per cent of Signature producers and the top 25 per cent," Christie says.-RI