I did some figurin’ on hog feed prices.  I like to do this every year.  The current prices I’m using include: corn $.10/lb, soybean meal $.17/lb, pig premix $.40/lb, sow premix $.49/lb.  This is using $5.60 per bushel corn and $340/ton soybean meal.

I put 150 lbs. of sow premix in every ton of sow feed and 100 lbs. of pig premix in every ton of pig feed.

The sow gestation ration uses 250 lbs of soybean meal per ton.  The sow lactation ration uses 540 lbs of soybean meal per ton.  So if you do all the math, gestation ration is $.14/lb and lactation ration is $.15/lb.

The pig rations use anywhere from 250 lbs of soybean meal per ton for the largest pigs to 600 lbs of soybean meal per ton for the smallest pigs.  I adjust the amount of soybean meal based on my feed budget and the size of the pigs.

After all the math, the cheapest ration for the largest pigs is $.12/lb and the most expensive ration for the smallest pigs is $.15/lb, with the in between rations falling in between.

There are more expensive rations for smaller pigs, but with my new farrowing system I plan to let the piglets nurse longer, thereby eliminating the need for the more expensive starter pig diets.

These rations are near the historical highs, but not quite as high as last year.  I think these prices are the new normal and we will learn to live with them.

I plan on experimenting with more grazing and feeding forages and alternative feedstuffs this year.  I’ll have feed and production records to analyze next year at this time.

I knew sows make nests before they farrow.  I didn’t know they spend so much time and effort on their nests after they farrow.

Look at this gilt raking the bedding with her front foot.  The bedding was more or less even, but she took one side of the pen down to the lime chip layer, and elevated the other side a foot or more.  This had to take hours.

I watched one gilt tear bedding off a bale with her mouth and carry it to her nest.  All of them do it to some extent.  Below is another picture showing a litter in an elevated nest.

Inspired by Walter Jeffries, who raises hogs with forage as the primary feedstuff, I decided to feed the sows a round bale of oats.  I baled these last summer when my oat fields blew down in a storm.

My plan had been to combine the oats, removing the oats from the straw, then bale the straw for bedding.  I had to use a backup plan, and cut the oats before they were ready to be harvested, and bale them as forage.

Cattle will readily eat this forage, but I hadn’t considered feeding it to swine until reading Walter’s blog.  It’s notable that I’m being inspired by the outliers.  Thank you, Walter.

This is a picture of one of the most recent litters.  I’ve had three littermate Duroc gilts farrow.  Each is an excellent mother.

The Duroc breed is not considered good for mothering ability.  There are some genetic lines within the breed, however, which have been selected for mothering ability.  I’ve been selecting from within these genetic lines for a while.

Farrowing crates can mask poor mothering ability, and bring the worst performers closer to the mean.  Farrowing without crates allows a fuller expression of a sow’s maternal instincts.  I’m happy to see positive results from my years of selection.

Splitting up farming with my parents means I needed to find a different way to farrow.  We used a combination of crates and pens in a heated farrowing barn on my parents’ farm.  It worked well.  Last year we average 10 piglets born alive and 9 piglets weaned per litter.

I was excited to try farrowing in pens, because it’s a new challenge, and because I don’t like crates.  Crates do save piglets from crushing, however, so the question is, can I raise enough piglets this way to be economically viable?

Pictured above, I built ten farrowing pens in one of my hoop buildings so each sow and litter could farrow in privacy.  I used a combination of round bales of bedding and wire panels.  I used the bedding bales to make the pens larger, and to have dry bedding accessible at all times.

I didn’t think it would work very well to farrow in an unheated barn in January.  But I didn’t have many due to farrow, so I thought I would try it, so I could learn.

The first gilt farrowed two weeks ago when the temperature was in the 20′s.  The air temperature in the hoop building is about ten degrees warmer than outside.  She and the piglets did fine.  She had eleven born alive and one stillborn.  You can see the dead stillborn piglet mixed in with the placenta in the picture below.  The gilt laid on four piglets during the first 48 hours.  The younger the piglets are, the more vulnerable they are to crushing.  The remaining seven piglets are doing well.

The next two gilts farrowed during an extremely cold time.  Temps were around zero F with below zero wind chills.  Those piglets didn’t do well.  18 out of 20 piglets froze or were crushed in the first few days.

Two more gilts farrowed last night.  Temps are in the 30′s.  They are doing well.

Pictured below is a behavioral trait I want to select for genetically.  Instead of just flopping down and crushing piglets, the gilt scoops out a bowl in the straw with her snout, kneels on her front legs, thereby extending her udder all the way down into the straw, then lies down.  Very few piglets will be crushed this way.

“Oh no!”  I said as I looked outside last Saturday morning.  “Oh no!”

We received  three inches of unexpected snow.  I had cut a large amount of wood in the pasture and left it to split and pick up.  Normally I like to pick it up if I cut it, because if it snows, you’re digging through the snow to pick up the wood.  I was overreacting though, because the snow melted in a few days and I was able to split and stack the wood on a hay rack to dry.

The boys however, reacted with joy.  Each got a shovel and built a private fort.  Gameboy’s came up to his knees, but he described it to a friend as a room he could walk in.

Once the snow started to melt and stick together, they built a snowman.  Now the snowman is the only remnant of our first snow.  Oh well, I’m sure there will be more.

I’ve started the “combover.”  I wanted to document this moment in time and let you know that, speaking for all “combover men”, ‘yes, we know we are leaving our hair longer and combing it over thinner areas.’  We just want everyone to pretend it’s not happening.  We think of ourselves as thick-haired studs, and would appreciate it if you would pretend to think that as well.

A woman was cutting my hair about ten years ago.  I asked her if my hair was thinning.  She said no, but too emphatically.  I knew she was lying, and I think she knew I knew she was lying, but I realized the delicate dance which had just started for me and would not be finished until I was dead or shaved my head.

The last couple of years my barber has started leaving my hair longer in certain places, and it’s funny how it just falls into place across the thinner areas.  And by ‘fall into place’ I mean, incessant stroking with my right hand in a diagonal, back-to-front motion.  My barber never acknowledged he was doing this, and I never brought it up.  I had joined the “brotherhood of the combover men.”

The steer calves, with one adventurous sow.

You can see the two-strand electric fence.  In the industry we refer to this as a psychological fence.  Hogs and cattle are easily trained to electric fence.  The fence around the other lot is a physical fence, with five-foot high cattle panels and two boards, attached to wooden posts.

While I hate to anthropomorphize and say they’re  friends, I will say they’ve gotten acquainted.

Wednesday was a big day for my new farm.  We moved 17 sows and 2 boars to my farm.  The sows have always been housed on my parents’ farm, but since we are splitting up our farms, I needed to figure out sow housing on my farm.

I could have used the hoop barns, as I have used them for sows with litters and gestating sows, from time to time when I had room.  But I figured I would need all three hoop barns for growing pigs, so I brainstormed and decided to use the former dairy barn which is the bottom of  my big old red barn.

A carpenter friend helped me shore up the old barn door and build the sliding door you see pictured below.  I came up with that so I could lock the sows in or out securely, and I didn’t want a door which swung, because the bedding could pile up next to the door and make it difficult to operate.

The sows exit the barn into the cattle lot.  This is where the steer calves eat their hay and drink their water.  This lot is fenced securely, but I also built another lot to give the calves more room, which is fenced with a two-strand electric fence.

So the time had come to make the move, but I had no idea how it would work.  The variables I was unsure of included:

1.Would the sows find and go in the barn?

2. Would the cattle and sows get along, or would they scare each other through the fence?

3. Would the sows see the electric fence, get shocked, then back away instead of going through and destroying it?

This is how I managed the situation.  I kept the calves and sows separated during the morning.  I fed some grain in the entrance of the barn to lure sows in.

How did it work?  The sows found the barn and all but one were sleeping in it by night.  I couldn’t get the one to go in, so I left the door open all night.  The calves were scared of the sows, but in a curious way with no stampeding.  A few sows were shocked by the electric fence and retreated without destroying it.

What didn’t work?  The sows enjoyed lounging by the calves’ hay, so the calves wouldn’t eat their hay.  I moved the hay further away so the calves could eat.

An unanticipated problem was the automatic waterer was frozen.  I put in a new Ritchie so the sows could drink, which I’ll post about later. I panicked for a moment, but all I had to do was turn the thermostat up.

The photo above shows a boar I call “Able” breeding.  Standing at the front of the sow is “Bewilder”, my other herd boar I wrote about earlier in the year.