The Rural Voice, 1993-03, Page 47T
They can't eat from
the ceiling
Saskatchewan veterinarian, Dr. Neil
Shantz, who advises Saskatchewan
farmers who own in total 13,000 hogs,
was the guest speaker at the Centralia
College Swine Update.
Turning around the usual phrase of
what is a lean hog, he said the usual
definition of a lean hog is the absence
of fat. To Shantz it is the presence of
lean. To that end he has worked with
large swine units (Hutterites) with top
management, and with packing plants.
There are two factors that measure
lean. One is backfat thickness, on
which farmers are paid, and the other is
loin eye. Shantz evaluates the lean
content of various genotypes. He has
found that loin eye is determined by
genetics while backfat is influenced by
rate of gain.
One thing he sees as a problem is
that many farmers find production of
Some farmers
find production of
hogs boring
finishing hogs "boring". But much can
be done to find those genotypes that
perform best. On one farm with a 250
sow herd, self feeders were installed in
the grower/finisher barn. The days to
market and the feed disappearance
remained the same as before, but the
market weight increased by 10.4 lbs.
The farmer measured feed efficiency
(feed intake and average daily gain);
Feed cost/unit of gain; feed cost/sq. ft.
Using all available figures Shantz
concludes that genetics, nutrition,
disease and feed intake all are involved
to limiting growth. This means that
good cross -breeding programs are most
important.
His studies found further that in
clean barns days to market were up to
rt 15 days less than in dusty barns. "They
can't eat from the ceiling", he quipped.
One farmer with excellent records,
found that the present batch of hogs
took five days longer to reach market
weight than any previous batch. He
called in Shantz and they couldn't find
News in agriculture
any change in management, until the
farmer said that he had added one pig
to each pen. This decreased floor space
from 8.2 sq. ft. to 7.8 sq. ft. This
clearly showed that floor space is
important and crowding is costly.
The importance of lean pork be-
comes clear when we know that it costs
less to produce lean than to produce fat.
Shantz likes to see better methods to
measure lean. Some American compa-
nies have begun to measure hams, he
said. That is part of one approach. We
measure lean by average daily gain,
carcass data, estimated lean yield and
index.
The bigger the hog, the higher the
percentage of fat put on so the more it
costs to produce a kg of pork. He
repeated his main contention that we
have to switch from thinking "less fat"
to "more lean".0
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FARM EQUIPMENT - EXETER ONTARIO
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MARCH 1993 43