Hutterville Colony was recognized for its Productivity Achievement in June at 28.6 p/s/y. This productivity comes from a herd average of 12.8 total pigs born, 12.3 pigs born live and 11.0 piglets weaned.

• Feel a sense of urgency that improvement is required
• Have a clear vision of the improvements needed
• Have the knowledge, skill and enthusiasm to bring about the necessary improvements
• Ensure widespread and clear communication between management and barn staff and remove all obstacles to the changes required
• Demonstrate and acknowledge progress that’s made.

There is little doubt that Canada will face increased international competition in the future and that labor and housing costs will increase, simply through inflation. The new reality for North American hog production is that future average hog prices will not be significantly above average production costs. Added to this is the likelihood that environmental concerns, welfare issues and regulatory controls will all add pressure to improve production efficiency and reduce input costs. Most costs in the breeding herd, including feed costs, are fixed costs. Increasing breeding herd efficiency by improving the number of pigs weaned/sow/year and reducing non-productive days will reduce overall production costs and thus increase profitability. In general, we will probably have a more significant effect on profitability by increasing output than we will by reducing input costs but obviously effort must be made to do both.

To recap on some ideas discussed in the series of articles presented previously in PEAK of Performance News! (Feb. 2002 to Jun. 2003):

• Ensure that the size of your sow herd is appropriate for the facilities available.
• Always meet your breeding targets. This can be calculated as:

number of farrowing crates available/week X 1.05 X 52
number of litters/sow/year

• Keep non-productive days (NPD: days on which inventoried gilts or sows are neither pregnant nor lactating) as low as possible. Each NPD probably costs $2.50. The Canadian average is probably about 60 but should be reduced to 45-50.
• The biggest contributors to NPD are:
  1. Entry to service interval [target: <40 days]
  2. Weaning to service interval [target: < 10 days]

The next most important contributors to increased NPD are the intervals between (a) entry to ‘no-heat’; (b) weaning to ‘no-heat’; (c) breeding to detected ‘not in pig’ and then intervals between (d) deciding to cull and (e) actually getting rid of the animals.

Some other ideas discussed previously are:

- properly size the gilt pool. Do not allow gilts to contribute excessive NPDs. Develop a good heat-induction system using vasectomized boars of high libido. Breed gilts when you need them to meet breeding targets. But it would be desirable to breed gilts when they are 130-135 kg, at their second estrus.

- do not wean any sows at less than 15 days of lactation. It is important that all records tell not only average performance levels but also the variation around the mean (measured as standard deviation or coefficient of variation). Of course, we want the average performance levels to meet our target levels over time but the actual variation around the mean may be equally or more important. Example: if you target to breed 50 animals a week except that you meet this target level over two weeks by breeding 40 one week and 60 the next. Yes, the average is 50 but the consequent increased stress on staff and facilities incurred by the week-to-week variation will be considerable. Some of this variation is uncontrollable because of normal biological variation but a lot of it is due to poor management. The bigger the variation in any performance parameter from week to week the greater is the opportunity for improvement. Concentrate on important parameters that have wide monthly swings. Figure out he cause of these swings, then try to minimize or eliminate it.