In the third edition of the State of the Pork Industry Report, Farm Journal’s PORK editor Jennifer Shike joins Cara Haden, veterinarian with Pipestone; Randy Kuker, director of swine production for The Equity; Adam Annegers, sow production manager at JBS; and Brad Eckberg, product subject matter expert with MetaFarms, to compare Q3 2024 sow and grow-finish data (obtained by MetaFarms from July 1 to Sept. 30) to what the experts are seeing in the barns.
Watch or listen to their entire discussion on YouTube. These experts share takeaways from Q3 and how understanding percentiles can help your farm be more profitable now and in the future.
There is a lot of positivity in the pork industry right now that can be attributed to higher farrowing rates this year, as well as higher born alive and lower stillborn numbers,” Eckberg says. “We saw a decrease in sow mortality by 1.2% from the from the same time last year.”
This positive reduction in sow mortality is significant for the industry, that will likely see the first yearly decline in almost six years of collecting sow mortality data, Eckberg adds. He believes extra focus on animal husbandry and animal welfare has helped the industry make improvements.
Meanwhile, Haden points out the decrease in porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is contributing to the reduction in sow mortality, too. From 2011-2012, the PRRS incidence rate was 40%. In 2023-2024, the PRRS incidence rate was less than 20%.
“It is absolutely, hands-down, the best PRRS year we've had since we started tracking PRRS incidence,” she says.
As a sow farm manager, Annegers likes seeing the industry trend in the right direction but says there is still opportunity to improve.
“A big thing we're working on is focusing on what we can control,” Annegers says. “We can identify those girls that need to be treated earlier and get medication into them. We can select the highest quality gilts with good leg structure. We can keep sows in the right condition all the time. If we focus on what we can control, we’ll be a lot better off.”
Kuker says it’s harder for him to correlate the lower sow mortality rates with what he is seeing on the finishing side, but he does know he has been seeing healthier pigs in the last six to nine months.
“I'm getting better startups on my pigs,” he says. “I'm dealing with less respiratory issues. Of the flows that I see, we've had less instances of PRRS breaks from the sow farms and less lateral breaks in our area than what we dealt with a year ago.”
That increase in overall health of the wean pig and decreased incidence of lateral disease has been a nice change, he adds.
On the grow-finish side, Eckberg says average daily gain continues to surprise him. In Q3, finishing hogs averaged a 1.94 lb. average daily gain. Feed conversion was also improved at 2.76 for finishing hogs.
Kuker says they’ve experienced less severe E coli. breaks, which he attributes to using more biosecurity measures and different feed ingredients and different levels of zinc.
Here are a few other key points the experts discussed:
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