AgriSwine Asia

Pig Farm Cost of Production Reduction

Cost of production decides whether a pig farm makes money. Most of it is set in three places: what you pay for feed, medicines and supplies, how efficiently the pigs turn that feed into meat, and how many pigs die after you have already fed them. I look at all three, because cutting the price of an input does little if the barn is wasting it.

Where the money goes

  • Feed. Usually the biggest line. Feed price and feed conversion (FCR) together decide most of the margin, so I look at both: the contracts and the feed wasted at the feeder, in storage and through poor growth.
  • Medication and vaccines. Spend is often driven by habit and by disease the farm has learned to live with. Understanding why the pigs need treatment saves more than buying cheaper products.
  • Supply contracts. Feed, medicines, genetics, energy and services, checked for price, terms and what you actually use.
  • Mortality and timing of deaths. A pig that dies late in finishing has eaten most of its feed. Late deaths cost far more than early ones, so where losses happen matters as much as how many.
  • Use of space. Kg sold per square metre of production space shows whether the buildings you have paid for are earning their keep.

What I did before

In a 6,000-sow multi-site operation in Ireland, renegotiating vaccine and medication contracts cut that spend by 25%. On the farms I have run, output reached over 2 tonnes sold per sow per year.

How it works

  1. You send your cost and production records: feed deliveries, medicine purchases, pigs sold, deaths and the main contracts.
  2. I visit the farm to see where the costs are made: feeders, storage, the medicine store, the hospital pens.
  3. Every finding is sorted into Pigs, People or Procedure, so you can see where the fix lies.
  4. You get a ranked list of savings, what each is worth, and what to do first.

Cost and production go together, so this work often runs alongside production performance consulting and nutrition and feed formulation.

Talk to Lee

Tell me about the farm and where you think the money is going. I will arrange a first call and propose a scope of work before anything is agreed.