Brumm Speaks Out

In a recent discussion, I was asked how much of Iowa’s fertilizer need was being met by land application of swine manure. At the same time, I’ve been driving across much of Iowa and looking at a corn crop that appears to have run out of nitrogen because of potential leaching of water soluble N due to the wet summer. I have also started thinking about community water supplies and the potential in future years for the pork industry to be cited as the cause of elevated nitrate-N levels in drinking water supplies.

This led me to do the following math. In 2007, Iowa had 13,842,282 acres of corn harvested for grain, with an average yield of 166 bu/A as reported by the 2007 USDA Census of Agriculture. If I assume that today’s hybrids are very efficient users of nitrogen, it takes about 0.8 lb of nitrogen per bushel of corn. This means that the Iowa corn crop in 2007 needed 1,838,255,000 pounds of nitrogen.

On December 1, 2006, there were 16,220,000 pigs in the kept for market inventory in Iowa. These pigs would have represented the average population that produced manure in 2006 that was land applied in the fall of 2006 for use by the 2007 corn crop. Note that I’m ignoring the manure production from breed-wean facilities. Although they produce a large amount of manure, relative to wean-finish their contribution to the following math is low, especially given the fact that approximately 50% of the wean-finish inventory in Iowa is imported from another state or Canada.

For ease of computation, I said all of the pigs would be housed in the equivalent of wean-finish facilities for an average stay of 165 days from weaning to slaughter. If the average manure production in wean-finish is 0.9 gal/pig/d and the manure in the pit contains 50 lb of total N per 1000 gal of manure, and there are 2 turns of pigs per space/year, this becomes 240,867,000 lb of nitrogen applied to Iowa cropland in the fall of 2006, assuming no losses from land application, etc.

The nitrogen from wean-finish swine manure applied to Iowa cropland had the potential to supply 13% of the total corn crop need in the 2007 year. Yes, some of the manure would have been over applied with the potential of leaching to water supplies. However, this analysis suggests that the swine population in Iowa is not nearly large enough to be the major source of nitrogen for the Iowa corn crop, or the major contributor to the nitrate-nitrogen that is increasingly reported from public water supplies.

In the above example, I used Iowa as it now has over 30% of the pigs in the nation. You could just as easily do the math for your local county or region using the USDA Census of Ag data for crop acres and inventory of pigs numbers. While Iowa no longer reports the pig inventory by county, Minnesota still does an estimate each December. Even in Martin county Minnesota (Farimont), the pig population is not large enough to produce enough manure to come close to meeting the fertilizer needs of the corn produced by farmers in that county.

Pork producers across the US have made remarkable progress in responsibly applying swine manure to crop land as a fertilizer resource. As communities struggle with meeting EPA nitrate-nitrogen levels in their drinking water, we need to use computations such as the above estimates to help them understand the impact of pork production in this issue. If we don’t speak up, we’ll become the bad guys once again.

The swine conference I attended in Mendoza, Argentina was very interesting. I had lunch yesterday with a producer from Chile who’s production records rival the best systems in the US. His challenge – how to source feed ingredients. In addition to attending the swine conference, he was spending several days sourcing corn that he will be feeding in December.

The corn he buys this week must be trucked up to 600 miles to a sea port, loaded on a ship, and then unloaded and truck transported in Chile. The same for his soybean meal (44%). The transport was adding approximately $0.90-$1/bu to his corn expense.

One of the presenters was from Spain and presented cost of production data for Spanish producers. Spain is the second largest pork producing country in Europe. Based on a conversion of $1.28 per Euro, the average cost of production in Spain in 2009 was $136.94 to produce a 230 lb pig. The breakdown was $32.45 to produce a weaned pig, $16.59 to take a weaned pig to 40 lbs and $87.90 for grow-finish gain.

The surprising number in the presentation was the death loss for pigs in all regions of Spain. Nursery mortality averaged 3.4% while grow-finish mortality average 5.15%. It appears that circovirus (PWMS in Europe) is really limiting their production as yet.

The average cost of corn was $4.83/bu, while their 44 soybean meal cost $362/ton (equivalent to $390/t for hipro meal). Feed was 62% of the total cost of production for Spanish producers.

In Argentina, they have a mix of production systems, with many producers still housing pigs outside, while the trend is a move to full confinement. The disease presentations discussed such items as atrophic rhinitis control, mange, APP lesions, etc., diseases that we have pretty well eliminated in our production flows in the US.

As best I can figure out, pork production is extremely profitable right now in Argentina. Long known for its beef production and consumption, consumers are shifting to pork as a lower cost animal protein alternative to expensive beef. Imports of pork are rising rapidly with imports in the first 5 months of this year up 24% versus 2009.

By the way, the pork is very delicious here. Last evening, I attended a banquet with over 400 people from the conference. Our meal was a 16 oz piece of pork shoulder. It was very tender, juicy and something that would be a hit at many American restaurants if they prepared it the same as what we had last night. When combined with the local wines – an outstanding meal.

I’m writing this blog from a motel room in Mendoza, Argentina. I am presenting 2 talks at a conference for veterinarians and producers. Mendoza is famous for its wine production and while Minnesota is sweltering, the highs here are around 60 with lows around 35.

On Sunday evening, the Minister of Agriculture for Argentina spoke at the opening session. He detailed the government’s goal of increasing pork production in Argentina in the next 10 years.

Currently Argentina is a net importer of pork. Beef is the preferred animal protein in the diet, but the cost of beef is so high many have turned to pork as an alternative. The government’s goal is to be self sufficient as a country in pork production as per capita consumption increases to a target of 30 lb/person. While this is only 50% of the US consumption, this is a major increase for Argentina.

The government is also looking for value-added production to complement corn and soybeans. We all recognize Argentina as our major competitor in the corn export market, and it is a growing competitor in the soybean market. The minister’s question – how can we increase employment in the country using these feedstuffs versus shipping the raw commodity somewhere else for the value addition to occur.

Currently, pork production is a mix of outdoor and indoor (extensive and intensive). My sense of the industry after 2 days talking with a large number of producers and advisors is they are where the US industry was in the mid 1970’s in terms of many of their confinement conversions from outside lots.

The Minister of Agriculture showed some of the details of low-interest loans for young producers to invest in intensive production facilities. He also talked about other ways the government was going to support pork production. I don’t have a sense of whether the consumers in Argentina are expressing opinions about animal welfare or odor issues.

I listened to one producer today who gave his story of converting from 250 sows pasture farrowing to 300 sows in crates, along with investments in confinement finishing. His whole herd feed conversion dropped from 4.2 to 3.14 while the tonnage sold per inventoried female more than doubled.

He also showed how he is utilizing the manure on his corn and soybeans. Just like Iowa and Minnesota farmers, his crop responded very well to the manure and he was thinking of expanding pork production, in part to have access to more manure.

There are some large production systems here. Their vision of the intensive production system of the future is fully slatted barns with either curtain sided barns or tunnel ventilation. So far, talk of wean-finish is very limited, with many producers still moving pigs from nurseries to growers to finishers.

The equipment being exhibited at the show is not much different from that shown at World Pork Expo or Iowa/Minnesota Pork Congress. They even have a 52” fan rated at 27,000 cfm at .12 static pressure. However, the fan was all galvanized so I don’t know if they have enough confinement experience yet to understand how to build/install durable equipment.

All of the vaccines we’re familiar with are on display as are such products as Excede and Draxxin. So far, I don’t know how much they are using water delivery for vaccines as I’ve only seen one water medicator (Dosetron) on display.

In the past 2 weeks I’ve traveled across much of northeast and central Nebraska, northern Illinois and eastern Iowa. Other than low spots being too wet, the corn and soybean crop is looking very good.

While my last blog dealt with corn quality concerns, apparently it isn’t too big of an issue in Iowa and Southern Minnesota, based on USDA sale weight data. For the week ending July 31, the average Iowa/SMinnesota sale weight was 267 lbs, the heaviest ever for this week of the year.

I expect sale weight to drop in coming weeks. I’m getting quite a few calls and comments regarding hot pigs. In some situations, production systems are limiting sprinkling of growing pigs because of full pit concerns. If this is occurring in your barns, my guess is that you are giving up 15-20 pounds in sale weight if you have to move pigs out on a fixed schedule.

With the weather we’ve been having this week (dew points above 70F and air temperatures in the upper 80’s and 90’s), adding water to the surface of the pig and allowing them to evaporate the water is still the best way to help them stay in their comfort zone and eating. I know many growers and producers have no options for manure removal when their pits are filling.

I’ve often wondered if producers shouldn’t plant 5+ acres of a summer crop such as oats, wheat or barley so they have a home for 20-30,000 gal of manure this time of year. The difference in sale weight for those that can’t sprinkle pigs now due to full pit concerns would more than pay for the inconvenience and lost revenue from such a decision.

With summer heat upon us, sale weights are dropping. The Iowa-Southern Minnesota average weight for the week ending July 17 was 267.3 pounds, down 0.9 pounds from the previous week. Last year at this time, weights were actually increasing due to the abnormally cool weather in July and August in the upper Midwest.

While every producer or production system has slightly different numbers, the decline is sale weight can be pretty dramatic. I’ve seen sale weights recently that are 15 pounds below the target sale weights for a production system. In one case, while feed intake had declined some, the decline was not enough to explain the sharp decline is sale weights.

Corn quality is an on-going concern. I expect quite a few comments and complaints regarding corn quality in the coming months. While much has been written about corn quality issues in the eastern cornbelt, I’m getting reports from clients in irrigated corn country where corn quality usually is very good.

In addition to low test weights, clients are becoming suspicious of vomitoxin and other mold caused contaminants in stored corn. With the Midwest having very good prospects of for a bin-busting corn crop, grain producers have begun to empty their on-farm storage in anticipation of harvest beginning in 2 months. The last corn from a grain producers bin is not what I look forward to feeding to growing pigs.

Traditional methods to overcome summer slumps in sale weight have been the addition of fat and Paylean to growing pig diets. Depending on marketing agreements with packers, Paylean may not be an option for some producers. This summer many are not using fat because of the relatively high cost of this ingredient relative to corn. Corn is currently costing about $0.06/lb, while fat is in the range of $0.25 to $0.30/lb. This means fat is costing 4 to 5 times the cost of corn.

Normally I would caution producers regarding the addition of fat to diets with this wide difference in price. However, the return for the addition of fat may be higher than normal this summer with the problems of poor corn quality combined with summer heat.

If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to visit with your nutritionist about the relative economics of fat addition for the next 2-3 months. With the current slaughter market in the range of $55 to $58 per cwt liveweight, it may pay to add fat if it results in an increase in sales weight.

While we know that feed is the largest expense in a wean-finish barn, and we all strive for a low feed cost per pound of gain, I don’t think we realize how important our investment in a feeder is. A couple of weeks ago I was involved in a conference call with Steve Dritz from Kansas State University. In a discussion of feeders, he brought up how much feed each feeder in a barn handles per year.

Let’s look at a wean-finish barn with small pens and a 60” feeder (tube or wet/dry or dry) feeding 2 pens of pigs. If we have a 40 ft wide barn/room, there are 25-27 pigs per pen (50-54 pigs/feeder). In a 50 ft wide barn/room, there are often 30-32 pigs per pen (60-64 pigs/feeder).

I did the math based on a 40 ft wide barn/room as that is the most common size in the US industry. If we assume there are 50 pigs sold from the combined pens in a wean-finish facility at each turn and there are 2 turns per year, this is 100 pigs/year/feeder. With an incoming weight of 12 pounds and a sale weight of 268 pounds, this is 256 pounds of gain per pig. If the wean-finish feed conversion is 2.55, this becomes 65,280 lbs of feed that goes thru that feeder in 1 year. This is 32.6 tons of feed. At $160/ton, this is $5,220. In ten years time, this becomes $52,200 of feed.

I think we all can acknowledge the importance of the feeder in controlling feed wastage. It is the control point for the biggest expenditure in our production facilities. Yet, we are often hesitant to spend money on this control point. I can’t begin to count all of the older facilities that I’ve been in that have feeders that need repair or replacement. At $160/ton, a change in feed conversion of 0.02 units (2.53 vs 2.55) is worth 512 pounds of feed per year ($40.96 @ $160/t) per feeder.

For grow-finish barns receiving 55 lb pigs and doing 2.8 turns per year, the numbers become 80,514 lbs of feed (40 tons) per feeder per year at a 2.70 feed conversion. A change of 0.02 units in feed conversion (2.68 vs 2.70) now becomes 596 lbs of feed per feeder per year ($47.68 @ $160/t).

For wider barns where there often are more pigs per feeder, the numbers become even bigger.

The point of this exercise – if old or worn out feeders are limiting you from getting good feed conversion numbers, it doesn’t take much improvement to justify replacement of the existing feeders. If you own pigs placed in contract finishing facilities, some type of cost sharing with a contract grower may be worth considering as they will be hesitant to replace feeders unless there is a f/g bonus in your payment scheme.

While it has been ‘warm’ in the Midwest this past week, it is nothing like conditions on the east coast. As I write this weeks blog, it is currently 89F in Clinton, NC with a dew point of 71F and predicted high temperature of 93F. Clinton is in the middle of the North Carolina pork production region. Thus, the definition of warm or hot depends on location.

For the pig, location doesn’t affect how it responds to heat. For grow-finish pigs, supplement wetting to assist in cooling is necessary when ever air temperatures get into the low 80’s. For curtain sided barns, I generally recommend that stir fans (if the barn has them), be set to turn on at 15F above the room set point in the controller. Set the sprinklers to turn on at 18F above set point.

For tunnel barns, I generally set the sprinklers to turn on at 20F above set point. In tunnel barns, by 20F, all of the tunnel fans are operating, and air flow in the pig zone is most likely 350+ fpm. When the pigs are wet by the sprinkler, they dry (loose heat) relatively rapidly. To avoid chilling of pigs, I am ok with wetting them beginning a few degrees warmer than I would wet them in a curtain sided barn.

For both tunnel and curtain barns, the sprinkler system should be capable of wetting 60% of the pen area in less than 2 minutes. Do not use fine mist nozzles to wet pigs. Fine mists cool the air above the pigs. The most effective cooling occurs when the pig evaporates the water from its skin, rather than by loosing heat to cooler (but more humid) air. Fine mists drift and don’t land where intended in the pen. In curtain barns, on windy days it’s not uncommon to have the grass on the north side of the barn very wet, with pigs in the south row of pens barely wet. In tunnel barns, the mist gets carried to the tunnel fans.

In reviewing literature on the impact of heat on grow-finish pigs this past week, many articles talk about using 0.1 gal/pig/hr as the target for cooling water use. I don’t know if this is right or not. In a 1200 head room, this is 120 gal/hr. If the cooling line runs 2 minutes out of 15, this is a total of 8 minutes of on-time per hour. This means the flow to the cooling line needs to be 15 gal/min. If the cooling line is supplied by a ¾” PVC pipe, the maximum flow rate is only 5.5 gal/min. I see many barns with comfortable pigs when a ¾” line is used so I suspect the 0.1 gal/pig/hr number isn’t correct.

What is correct is that the pigs should be thoroughly wet in less than 2 minutes of ON-time and then allowed to dry. Generally I recommend starting with 15 minutes of OFF time and adjusting as necessary. When the floor under the pigs begins to dry, this is a signal that it is time to re-wet the pigs.

While much has been written about the progress of this year’s corn crop, I can attest that I saw a field of corn tasseling in southern Minnesota on July 4, with many more just at the edge of shooting a tassel. Yes, many fields are yellow from too much water, but you’ve got to believe in a good crop when it’s raining on corn that is tasseling a good 2 weeks ahead of ‘normal’. In addition, no 90 F temperatures in the forecast for our area.

Speaking of corn, this past week I came across the revised website for the Renewable Fuels Association. Of interest on the site is the section devoted to statistics from the industry (http://www.ethanolrfa.org/pages/statistics/). For those of us that use DDGS in swine diets (just about everyone in the swine industry), they compute the amount of DDGS produced weekly – a relatively good look at the supply side of the equation for this product. For the 4 weeks that ended on June 4, 11, 18 and 25, total production of distillers grains (metric tons – 2200 lb) was 83,603, 83603, 84,300 and 82,907.

It is worth noting that the RFA estimates that 20% of the dry mill plants are extracting corn oil from the product after fermentation. This highlights the fact that all distillers grains are not equal. The biggest factors impacting quality of distillers grains with solubles for swine diets are 1) oil extraction 2)amount of solubles added back and 3) drying temperature.

According to this website, the ethanol industry is using 12.6-12.8 million bu of corn weekly to produce approximately 35 million gallons of ethanol daily.

Last week I promised comments on the Hogs and Pigs report. The biggest news (in addition to no rebuilding of the sow herd evident in the data) was the continued improvement in productivity in the farrowing house. Since 2002, pigs weaned per litter has been increasing at the rate of 0.01 pigs/month. However, for the past 2 years, the average has been well above the trend line – closer to 0.02 pigs/month increase. My entire commentary and associated graphs is available at: http://porkcentral.unl.edu/brummjune2010.pdf

Lots of random thoughts this week. My next blog will include my thoughts on the Hogs and Pigs report that was released last Friday.

This past weekend we returned to northeast Nebraska to a wedding. A chance to meet with old friends and to look at crop progress. In general, corn and beans looked tremendous from Mankato to Sioux City. Northeast Nebraska (and much of Nebraska in general) is suffering from too much rain (or at least too much rain too fast). While the crops on the hillsides looked ok, the bottoms were either washed out, covered with cornstalks or not planted or etc. I think you can see the trend. Around the Wayne, NE area, almost 20% of the corn stood in the field all winter so planting was delayed until harvest was completed. When you add to that all of the rain, the crops are in desperate need of some heat units and dry weather.

In the Mankato, MN area, weekend storms did considerable crop damage. When combined with the storms from the previous week, parts of Minnesota look rough. However, overall, reports from most producers across the state suggest a tremendous crop in the making.

In Iowa, especially southern Iowa, too much rain is again the story. In central to northern Iowa, a very good crop in the making, except for where storm damage may be in isolated belts. In South Dakota, a lot of soybean acres going unplanted due to too much water.

All of these stories about too much water suggest that when pollination begins in a few weeks, moisture won’t be a concern, meaning chances are good that we will once again have a very good corn crop. The futures market is reflecting this as prices creep lower. I can’t help but begin thinking about strategies for pricing of corn for next year – when do you lock in your price to keep your cost of production reasonable?

What will quality be like in the 2010 crop? Reports from across the corn belt indicate that we are seeing continued reductions in pig performance due to the 2009 crop problems. In the western corn belt, it appears that energy in the grain is a limit to performance. Normally, producers would add fat to summer diets to maintain energy intake. However, with fat costing $0.30 per pound or more and corn costing $0.055-0.06 per pound ($3.10-3.40/bu), almost all producers have removed fat from grow-finish diets.

I’ve heard of country elevator bids under $3 per bushel. I haven’t heard of anyone selling at that price though. Several people have commented on the amount of grain moving from on-farm storage to ethanol and country elevator points. On the drive to Nebraska there were more grain trucks on the road than usual. I think this reflects grower’s belief that they will have a good crop in 2010 and they are moving corn to make storage space on-farm for this fall.

The heat index in eastern Nebraska reached 100F+ last Saturday. I was in our research barns this morning and the workers said the pigs didn’t move around much on Saturday. I receive a daily email from our data logging system at one of the barns, and drinking water usage dropped to almost zero midday on both Friday and Saturday. This means feed intake was also near zero during this time frame, even though we have tunnel ventilated facilities with misters for added cooling. There have been several evenings in the past week when the ventilation system didn’t begin slowing down until 4 or 5 am. It is logical to expect sale weights to drop off sharply in the coming weeks. If weights don’t drop fairly rapidly (the typical summer slump), it’s because producers have more space available for pigs due to reduced inventories and can keep pigs longer to maintain sale weights. If this happens, we should have some smaller kills in the coming weeks as this inventory builds due to heat effects.

Finally, all of the storms in Iowa and Minnesota has meant several hog facilities have been severely damaged. I know I’ve written about emergency planning in the past, but this is a good reminder. Have you given any thought to where you would put your pigs if their facility was damage/destroyed in a storm? In my experience, while some pig deaths occur in storms, the bigger problem is sunburned pigs in the days following the storm. If you can’t get the pigs under a roof by noon on the next day, you begin having severe sunburns on the pigs. These sunburns end up as infections in quite a few of the pigs, meaning your loss may be bigger after the storm than from the storm directly.

While we don’t like to think about it, last night’s bad weather in Minnesota with tornados, loss of power and general destruction of building sites should be a good reminder that every production unit needs to have an updated emergency action plan in place.

Many producers think of emergency action plans as having to do with lagoon spills, manure pumping issues, etc. However, the best action plans include provisions for such things as power failures, facility damage, etc. While you aren’t going to read the plan when a catastrophe occurs, if you’ve thought about it when you created (and reviewed) your emergency response plan, chances are your reaction to events will be better.

As readers of this blog are aware, I am always ‘harping’ on the issue of emergency systems in the event of a ventilation failure at a site. That is, are the curtain drops maintained and/or the generator and transfer switch functioning so heat removal can happen when the system fails. For big pigs, my models of heat transfer in facilities suggest you have no more than 30 minutes to begin removing heat from a facility full of pigs before death loss begins to occur due to hyperthermia. In nurseries and wean-finish facilities with smaller pigs, you’ve got up to 1 hour before deaths begin occurring.

In addition to emergency ventilation, does the emergency plan include details of dead animal disposal in the event of a catastrophe? If you were to have 500 pigs die due to a ventilation failure, fire, gassing associated with pit pumping, etc., what would you do with the carcasses? In most states, the general requirement is disposal in an approved manner within 24-48 hours? If you use a rendering service, can they deal with this many pigs in this time frame? If you are going to bury the dead animals, what are your state and local requirements for the burial pit? How many feet above ground water does the bottom of the pit need to be, how much dirt must be on top of the burial pit at closure, what about distance to any water sources, long term record keeping requirements, etc.? Is composting approved for disposal in the event of a catastrophe? If yes, how much residue will you need to source to make an effective compost pile or windrow?

In the event of a tornado or fire, how will you dispose of the ruined structural components? Can you bury/burn on-site or do your state and local regulations require disposal at an approved landfill? Must you separate recyclable materials such as metal gating, roof tin, crates, etc from wood components? What about any hazardous materials such as asbestos floor tiles in an old office area or asbestos cement board in old buildings?

There are commercial firms that specialize in site clean-up following a catastrophe. Have you checked them out for location, costs, etc? Better to have an idea of who to call and what it will cost prior to an event than be stuck calling around to see who is available, etc. What about insurance to cover the cost of disposal?