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| The more of this thread I've read, the more questions I have. Are you thinking about jumping into the small time farrowing business or putting up a contract finisher? You mentioned a family, what's your wife want? What's your land base like?
I have a contract finisher and one of those (almost) 6 figure jobs, but I'm not married and can't imagine I would be very long if I was.... but contract finishers are easy peasy lemon squeezy most of the time. Like anything with moving parts, they have their days. The biggest thing is a good land base that is close if you want to go in that direction. Manure nutrient value will replace about $10,000 of dry fertilizer a year, which will make a guy a lot more competitive on row crops IF he can use it.
If you want to go into heritage style pig raising, more power to you but from an economy of scale standpoint, that will not go with a large scale row crop operation very well. You will make more money on a per unit standpoint, but if you can make $100/head you're going to need to raise and have a market for 1000 of those bad boys every year to replace these available everywhere 6 figure jobs. And 1000 hogs on pasture sounds like problems waiting to happen. The guy raising them in hoops probably gets along great in Nebraska, but I'm guessing that in southern Indiana you would have a lot more fights with mud, humidity (respiratory issues for pigs), etc.....
All that said, your tag line tells me you have a great taste in music and will be perfectly successful. Gotta love some Tom T. Hall. | |
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Getting into Hogs?
