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Why It Pays to Stop Feed Wastage Now

Why It Pays to Stop Feed Wastage Now
By Chris Hostetler
 
For every pig farmer in 2021, it could pay big dividends to know the answer to this simple question: How much feed never gets eaten by your pigs and ends up as waste?
 
Whether it’s in a manure pit below a farrowing or gestation barn or under multiple grow-finish barns, feed wastage this year could translate into massive losses, especially with corn prices above $5 per bushel and soybean meal north of $400 per ton.
 
The answer to the feed wastage question is most certainly that “you don’t know.” However, this is truly a case of what you don’t know may hurt you, especially in a high feed-cost environment. Regardless, it is likely to be far more than we would care to admit.
 
The current elevated grain prices have dramatically increased the cost of feed and have had a negative impact on every pork producer’s bottom line.
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Trending Video

We Let Dad Drive a 50,000 Pound Dump Truck

Video: We Let Dad Drive a 50,000 Pound Dump Truck



There's old hog barns under that field now. The old hog barn site on the farm has been sitting there for decades, and this is the week it finally came out: concrete pad, burn pile, charred lumber, all of it loaded into a CAT 725C rock truck and buried in a pit we dug back in the timber.

Tork's been waiting his whole life to drive one of these, so he gets the keys to a 50,000 pound rock truck and I ride shotgun. The excavator loads, the dozer clears the timber, the drone shows the whole site from above, and by sundown there's nothing left of the old place but a smooth patch of dirt. It's a weird feeling erasing something that was here before either of us, but the farm has to keep moving.