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Iowa | I am feeder to finish, so my numbers will be a bit different. My oldest barn is 10 yrs old and we just did some long-term averages that I will share. (I raised pigs "outside" for 25 years before that) First a few things:
I wouldn't even DREAM of this if you are going to buy the corn or do not have owned or VERY SECURE land to grow it. We used to always make $$ turning $2 corn into $40 hogs, but in the last few years it has been possible to turn $6 corn into $5 corn. That's bad enough when you can still survive with $5 corn out of the pigs when you could have stayed in bed and got $6, but bankruptcy would be possible if buying the corn.
Guys that say, "just lock in everything and you'll be fine" are blowing smoke--sometimes it's not possible to lock in a breakeven (too high cost of inputs vs too low of hog futures) but to stay on schedule you have to fill up anyway.
You better have a good banker. You may not be able to obtain financing for such a venture, which I think would be a blessing in disguise.
Since you mention only custom farming, that's another problem--you need owned land for the manure. Because even if you break even with the pigs, a least you saved a bunch of money on fertilizer. Manure on rented land without some sort of really long-term lease? No way would I do that. I had manured a VL testing rented farm for many years, and a guy from 40 miles away rented it away without me even getting a chance. He paid way up because of all the manure, farms it w/o a drop of fert except some N. I would never, ever, put a drop of manure on arms-length rented (non-family or close friend) land. Never.
If your pig source isn't as good as you think, or you must source pigs elsewhere on occasion, you will have some extra difficulties.Mixed or multi-sourced pigs= higher death losses.
If your feeder pig seller is all for himself, always wanting the highest $$, that is a struggle as well. I went through 2 previous sources that were like that, the guy I've bought from for over 10 years now always says, "this won't work unless we both make money". We can always work something out we can both live with. A contracted price only works as long as the pig supplier wants it to, in other words, better for him than you. If the price is not to their liking, they will either just stop delivery or shuffle enough paper to bankrupt your pig source and nullify the contract.
It takes me 8.75 bu of corn/hd from 50 to 275#
FEEDER to finish death loss over 10 yrs has averaged 1.65%. Weaned would be much higher.
Trucking: 80 cents a head coming in and $2.80/hd going out. Nursery and packing plant are both about $50 miles away. "in" trucking costs as much as it does because I pay for a $200 wash and disinfect for each truck each time I fill, which is high but has a very good ROI in my opinion.
Manure pumping: I don't see how you could borrow the $$ to do it yourself, especially if their aren't a lot of pigs around and you aren't getting into the custom business. As the custom costs rise, it eats into the fertilizer savings, especially if you have to go over a mile or two with it.
Grinding feed: I really don't know. Never tracked it very well. Takes A LOT of time and you need bins for the corn and bean meal, and need a heated shop, because a bearing WILL go out of the grinder during a blizzard--guaranteed.
Chores: 2X per day is mandatory. We walk every pen and "spin" every pig (every pig gets it's own "glance", looking for any problems like stiffness, heavy breathing, etc.), both times. Some people do this once a day and just walk the alley the other time, but they can't match our death loss percentage. If everything is fine, meaning only a few injections (or none) and no leaky waterers, plugged feeders, etc, 1000 hd takes 40 minutes for a really through looking-over.
Summary: You have to walk before you can run. Custom feeding would be best for you by far. If custom feeding"s numbers aren't something you can live with, I'd forget it. Those of us who feed our own are diversified (own land, bins, etc) and most of us gradually got bigger as our skills and technology allowed it. Even if you COULD get financing (and that's a big "if"), you will be making rookie mistakes on YOUR dollar--better to custom-feed and build equity and learn.
Why doesn't your "BTO" build more space for these pigs himself? There might just be a good reason that's not in your favor.
Custom-feed or forget it. | |
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Wean to Finish questions
