More pig producers should ‘bite the
bullet’ and weigh their growing pigs to cut lost earnings, was the conclusion
from our 2TS Focus on Finishing conferences.
Joao Cavaco Rodrigues, swine
business unit manager at Elanco, said that up to 30% of pigs can fail to reach
target weight at slaughter, whether that is because of mortality, culls or poor
growth resulting in ‘light’ pigs.
Because losses happen gradually, producers are
often not even aware of them and it can be difficult to pinpoint where in the
cycle they occur.
Weighing pigs at each stage of
production provides the information to spot trends and issues. There is extra
labour involved in weighing pigs, but it doesn’t have to be every pig in every
batch. Producers can get valuable information by weighing just one group of pigs
at each stage as a one-off exercise or an exercise they do each year, for
example.
You have to diagnose the
problem first in order to find the solution. Once producers have identified
when and where performance is dipping, they can target changes to that part of
the system to improve health and growth efficiency.