The hog industry continues to evolve on the heels of some vigorous ups and downs over the last number of years. The players are getting more intense, producers who mean business and want the experts to level with them on all sides, the good, the bad, and maybe even the indifferent.

However, raising the pig, getting the weights right, and at the end of the day making sure the consumer not only gets what she wants, but the larger body totally perceives they’re getting it right.

Dr. Mike Brumm, the president of Brumm Swine Consultancy says, to accommodate today’s heavier market weight hogs (because of the demand for bigger cuts and shipping more meat on the same pig), pork producers need to be looking at increasing the size of their feeders.

Brumm says since 1977 in the United States, producers have added 1.3 pounds per year to the carcass weight of market hogs so 15 years from now the pig is going to be 20 to 25 pounds heavier than today so feeders need to be bigger.

“Number 1, the biggest point on a pig, dimension wise, is the shoulder width. Your code of practice has a table on feeder width, on shoulder width, and basically it says, at today’s sale weights, our feeder holes need to be at least 14 inches or 35 centimeters,” he said. “If they’re less than that, big market weight pigs can’t all get in the feeder holes because they’re just too big.”

Brumm says the second dimension is from the front edge of the feeder to where feed is presented, because as the pig grows bigger its nose gets longer so we have to start increasing that. Harold Gonyou at the Prairie Swine Centre in 1997 determined that 10 inches or 25.5 centimeters from the front lip to feed presentation on a dry feeder was correct for a 97 kilo or 215 pound pig.

“Remember we’re selling a 127 kilo pig in the U.S. on average today. That means we’ve got to make these feeder spaces bigger,” he said. “Whether they’re the wet-dry shelf or a dry feeder, we’ve got to make the eating activity of a pig enjoyable, have a quality eating experience.”

Dr. Brumm says this is a sure bet, pigs next year will be bigger than this year.

While the industry struggles with inches in the feeder, and pigs getting bigger each year, there is still the question of getting enough pigs to the processing plants in Brandon and Neepawa and points further west and in between.

At the same time, Florian Possberg, the chair of the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board says there’s a strong desire among western Canada’s pork processing plants to be able to access increased numbers of slaughter hogs from Saskatchewan.

To improve returns to pork producers through reduced transportation distances and costs, the Saskatchewan Pork Development Board is working to attract expanded processing capacity to that province.

Possberg says, by expanding processing capacity in Saskatchewan, we create a local market that has a lot less freight costs.

“We do produce about 2,000,000 hogs annually here in the province. About half those hogs are owned by Olymel, former Big Sky Farms company, and they would almost exclusively go to the Red Deer Olymel plant,” he said. “In Saskatchewan, the Thunder Creek plant does roughly 6,000 hogs a week. In addition probably about a third or a quarter to a third of our hogs would go to Manitoba plants.”

He thinks there’s interest in the Red Deer plant, in the Brandon plant and the Moose Jaw plant to have additional supplies come to their plants (More like a major desire and need).

Probably Thunder Creek in Moose Jaw is in the best position to encourage Saskatchewan production but thinks the other companies as well, Maple Leaf and Olymel and Hylife would very much like to see additional hog production availability for their plants.

Possberg says Sask Pork is taking a Saskatchewan first approach in terms of processing capacity but where there’s a demand, the province’s producers are being encouraged to supply the needs of all of our western Canadian pork processing plants.

As one can see, there is ample room for production increases, production improvements, and many other things that keeps the experts and researchers busy, and the producers intensifying their interests in putting that knowledge to practical use. •

— By Harry Siemens