October 2024 - Journal F e - Flipbook - Page 10
Nutrition
FIELD TO FEED:
Ensuring Pig Nutrition When Life Gets Busy
Hayden Kerkaert
Nutritionist
Pipestone Nutrition
It’s one of the most wonderful times of the year, and
no it’s not Christmas, it’s harvest time! Corn stalks 昀氀ying
and bean stubble being made is a farmer’s dream
and at the forefront of everyone’s mind. However,
we can’t forget about our 4-legged friends in our
barns. The importance of keeping the right ration and
right amount of feed in front of our pigs cannot be
overlooked. Feed outages and feed wastage can both
result in poorer performance, increased mortality and
negatively impact the bottom line.
As you are called away from your barns more
often, don’t forget these important things to
keep in mind:
Check that feeder adjustments are set
correctly. Feeders left wide open will lead to
feed wastage that will negatively impact feed
conversions up to one tenth. Although feed ingredient
prices have come down, one tenth of feed conversion
is still worth $2.85/pig. Feeders set too tight result in
feed restrictions in which translates to poorer growth
performance. (See the recommended ideal pan
coverage in the image at right.)
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Most feeders are not built with enough feed
capacity for late 昀椀nishing pigs to make it an
entire day with only one 昀椀lling. Two or more
feed outages in late 昀椀nishing can affect negatively
market weights, with more than two outages reducing
market weight up to 10 lbs. In addition, feed outages
at any point in the life of the pig can result in increased
mortality from twisted gut and hemorrhagic bowels. Be
sure to continue checking barns two times a day, even
if the second check is just to make sure every feeder is
full in the barn.
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Always check bin 昀椀ll levels and that the correct
bin slides are open prior to leaving the site.
This will help con昀椀rm the amount of feed
present at the site and verify no feed hangups have
occurred.
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Be proactive on ordering feed and don’t try
to stretch out feed deliveries, especially going
into weekends. It is cheaper to order less feed
to 昀椀ll up a bin prior to the weekend than it is to run out
of feed or to pay for an emergency same day order of
feed. There are several feed budgeting tools available,
to the right is an example of a feed intake chart to help
predict feed usage.
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New crop corn is typically higher quality than
the corn we just cleaned out of bins. However,
it is important to test for mycotoxins to gauge
corn quality from this year’s crop. No two crops are the
same and it’s good to know if we may have mycotoxins
before the pig tells us. Reach out to your nutritionist to
get a new crop corn sample submitted.
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