By Alyssa Cornelison
Editor’s note: Alyssa Cornelison is Research and Technical Services Associate, Zinpro Corporation. For more information, contact ‘tcory@bader-rutter.com.’
Keeping a business healthy and thriving is a priority for any swine production system. When improving the performance of your nursery pigs, nutrition plays a critical role. But when faced with rising feed costs, new regulations and supply chain volatility, it becomes even more vital that you make feed investments that yield better performance results.
To make strategic feed investments, having an intimate understanding of the different factors impacting the success of your production system will allow you and your nutritionist to better prioritize feed decisions.
Which factors contribute to swine farm profitability?
From a high-level view, there are many factors that can influence the profitability of your operation. However, there are three specific factors that we can zero in on and use to understand 98 per cent of system variation: the cost of gain by weight, the price of pork by weight and the cost per weaned pig.
As we think about making smart feed investments, cost of gain by weight is the factor that you can directly influence with pig diet costs. The key metrics that influence cost of gain by weight are ingredient cost, feed budget execution, amount of feed waste and livability.
All four of these metrics are key influencers of cost of gain by weight, but only one of these can be more easily influenced through the diet: livability. As you improve livability in your nursery pigs, you’ll positively impact your cost of gain by weight as well.
How does livability affect your nursery phase production goals?
Just a one per cent change in mortality can mean the difference between making a profit or loss. On the other hand, a one per cent increase in marketed pigs out of the nursery can make an even greater contribution to your bottom line.
In today’s market, the average cost of mortality is a direct cost of $0.77 CAD per marketed pig and an opportunity cost of $2.75 CAD per marketed pig. In nursery flows managing through severe health challenges and seasonal pressures, the direct cost per marketed pig could be as high as $27.54 CAD per animal. These challenges are why nutritional choices must drive results that benefit your pigs and the financial health of your operation.
Zinc: a tool for health and livability
As we think about the massive cost nursery mortality has on an operation, we need to consider if we’re using nutrition as a tool to prevent it. Thinking about health, immunity and stress mechanisms, zinc is a trace mineral that can make noticeable differences in your swine herd.
To gain the benefits of zinc, choosing an easily absorbed, bioavailable source is key and can help you raise healthier, faster-growing pigs more cost-effectively, helping you achieve your production goals.
Recent research revealed that E. coli-challenged pigs fed an amino-acid complexed zinc displayed improved health and livability while increasing early post-weaning feed intake compared with the animals fed an alternative form of zinc. These pigs continued eating more and kept putting on more weight during the 42-day growth phase and experienced additional performance improvements including 2.7 per cent reduction in mortality, 5.4 per cent reduction in medical interventions and 20-gram daily improvement in early feed intake.
With these results, incorporating the right zinc into the ration can improve your profitability by $2.19 CAD per pig or more and reduce your cost of gain by $0.15 CAD per kilogram. Work with your nutritionist to incorporate amino acid-complexed zinc for the best and most consistent performance results in the nursery. By doing so, you can reduce your cost of gain by weight and improve pig performance, ensuring your feed investments provide maximum value throughput and ultimately help your balance sheet.