CPC is also considering a plan to promote Canadian pork as Branded product so as to distinguish it from pork from outside the country. This will take a measure of cooperation between producers, packers, processors and retailers to make Canadian Pork a success. No question that “Danish pork” has a recognizable cachet in worldwide exports – we should be able to determine “Canadian Pork” as a superior product at home and abroad. There may be a place for “Lacombe Heritage Pork” as well in this mix, for domestic sales on local meat counters.

Breed	Total	Live
Yorkshire	12.6	11.1
Landrace	10.2	9.2

Profitability

The objective of the grow-finish unit is to maximize profit! Annual profitability of the unit is a product of throughput (capacity utilization) and efficiency of production (growth rate, feed conversion efficiency, mortality, carcass weight and grade). Growth rate, entry weight and exit weight will determine throughput. Target market weights will be dictated by the grading grid at your packing plant. The optimum market weight for an individual pig is the weight at which there is no more profit to be made by retaining that pig. The factors influencing the economic value and profitability of each pig are:

1. Pricing matrix
2. Feed costs
3. Feed conversion efficiency
4. Carcass quality

Therefore, marketing strategies can change with time and market opportunities. Because pig producers have different genotypes and different feed costs each unit must identify the economic value and profitability of their pigs at different market weights and also determine the feed and other production costs of maintaining that pig over time. Feed conversion efficiency (the amount of feed required to put on a kg of gain, increases as the pig gets heavier, especially as it approaches market weights of 115 to 120 kg. This is because more feed is used for maintenance and the pig starts to deposit more fat per unit gain.

Grading Losses

Although grading grids have been adjusted in recent years to provide wider acceptable carcass weights, there is still considerable economic loss from marketing ‘underweight’ and ‘overweight’ pigs. The costs associated with marketing at incorrect weights (non-conformance loss) can be very large and are different for pigs sold above and below optimal market weight. An example of such loss is shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Effects of Market Weight on Profitability

Carcass wt, kg	Average weight, kg	Grade index	Dollars lost compared to optimum weight
<70	67.0	103.0	$32.05
70-74.	71.56	106.3	$24.22
75-84.9	81.79	111.8	$7.28
85-94.9	89.58	111.0	$0.00
95-104.9	98.11	109.9	$7.47
>105	108.16	108.0	$15.70

With this grid, the optimum carcass weights were 85 to 95 kg. The losses per pig from selling below optimum market weight were larger than those suffered from selling above optimum weight. Therefore, if marketing errors cannot be avoided, then it is best to market pigs at heavier weights rather than lighter.

Optimum Weights

It is not uncommon for 40 % or more of marketed pigs to be sold outside their optimum market window (25% too light, 15% too heavy). It is obvious that currently used systems of selecting pigs for market are not working well. A reasonable target for weight ranges at time of sale might be:

Liveweight kg	Carcass kg	%
103-110	75-85	15
111-119	86-95	75
120-110	96-104	10

The most practical way to ensure that the majority of pigs are sold at their optimum weight is to weigh a randomly selected number of pigs. The golden standard is to weight all the pigs on a weekly basis as they approach market weight. But weighing pigs is not anybody’s idea of a good time and the pigs don’t like it either. Weighing pigs takes time and considerable effort. The cost of selecting and weighing pigs can range from $0.18 to $0.74 per pig. This large variation in weighing cost is due to labor costs and efficiency of the facilities available. So how many pigs do we need to weigh and when should we weigh them? In the next article in this series we will deal with strategies to improve revenues from marketing pigs by weighing a selected number of pigs.