KEY FACTORS

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31047, 30 April 1966, Page 8

KEY FACTORS

To operate successfully a pig raising and finish- 1 ing enterprise like that of Mr G. S. Meyer at t Springston required a high degree of managerial skill or “pigmanship,” Professor J. D. Stewart, professor of farm management at Lincoln College, said this j week, commenting on the project with which he is associated in an advisory capacity. Without this skill on the part of the proprietor or operator, Professor Stewart said, this sort of business would not work. The person concerned had to know and like pigs. Commenting on the enterprise up to this stage, Professor Stewart said that an important feature was the low-cost feeding of sows, with

minimum use of concentrates by them, and this was in fact being achieved. At one stage it had been thought that similar low-cost outdoor feeding might be possible with the weaners, but this had not been practical mainly because of the high feed requirements for energy and heat losses, so that they had selected a relatively low-cost deep litIter system to try to keep the costs down, but the weaners were now on concentrate feedstuffs. Professor Stewart said that the feed conversion rate was vital and the objective ought to be to get the total cost of purchased feed down to about 60 per cent or less of the total revenue from pigs. To obtain this sort of performance there had to be the high degree of “pigmanship,” or management, already mentioned.