Key Factors (Continued from Page 32) Number of Pigs Per Pen Keep this at 25 pigs or less. When group sizes exceed 25, the social stability breaks down, resulting in more unrest among the pigs. Moving and Loading Hogs As a producer, you represent a critical link be tween the farm and the dinner table. Clearly, genet ics plays an important role in lean content and pork quality. But it’s just as clear that pork quality can suffer when pigs are not loaded carefully. Design your facilities so that pigs move with a minimum of pushing and persuasion. Sharp cor ners, narrow alleys, and loading chutes through which pigs can see out should not be part of your system. The more shouting, slapping, and shocking that is required to move the pigs from the pen to the truck the greater the incidence of pale, soft, and ex udative (PSE) pork. Feeder Adjustment Too many producers believe that feeder adjust ments is a once-a-month routine. Removing any fouled feed and adjusting the feeders should be a daily process. NEW SORTALL HOG BUILDINGS The ONLY PATENTED HOG SORTING SYSTEM IN THE U.S. Designed by Schick Enterprises • Automatically Sorts Pigs By Weight • Make Money On Sort Bonus • Ho More Battles On Market Day We Can Help With All Your Building Si Equipment Meeds Backed By » unrrs SUPER SORTER - THE PERFECT PIG PICKER Hog Contracts Available SCHICK ENTERPRISES 1-800-527-7675 Visit our website; schickenterprises.com AP Quality Barrows grow faster and eat more than gilts, but gilts have more muscle and are leaner. So it’s logical that gilts respond to higher dietary lysine. The eco nomic incentive to split sex feeding is to optimize carcass value in the gilt and to minimize feed cost for the barrows. Formulation for Lean Gain Many producers assume that the lysine concen tration in their grow-finish diet matches the needs of the pig. Actually, making this decision requires considerable effort and some intelligent assump tions. For example, to determine the optimum lysine concentration, the following information is needed: average starting weight, average days on feed, average carcass weight, and loin eye area and backfat (or comparable optical probe measure ments). From these values, we can calculate lean gain per day and then estimate the daily lysine requirements. The average feed intake must be known to calculate the appropriate lysine percentage for the diet. Be cause this process is a bit complicated, most produc ers will not go to the effort. Estimating the most economical lysine concen tration is even more difficult because it requires knowing how pigs respond to varying lysine levels, (Turn to Page 35) • Pigs Will Be Sorted, Ready For Loading • You Can't Afford To Build Without It - Can Be Installed in Existing Buildings Split Sex Feeding [feed |
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