In 2013 I was called in to help a Russian pig business get its labor costs down to EU/US levels. That turned out to be the least of their problems.
The business had remodeled two collective farms in 2006, importing all their equipment from the USA. The feeding systems installed were built for pelleted feed. The farm was running meal.
Meal doesn’t flow through those systems the way pellets do. So every day, for at least six years, someone walked the length of the feed silos banging on the bins by hand to get the feed moving. It worked, in the sense that it filled the tube feeders — barely. Two pens of finishers, 40 pigs, running on feeders that held about 50kg at a time.
I modified the silos, adding a mechanism to help the feed flow properly on its own. It took about two months before the effect on the pigs was visible. Dead weights increased by 15kg per pig. Mortality dropped from 12% to 2%. And as the pigs came back up to their real target weights, the population needed to hit the same output numbers dropped sharply — which, on paper, looked like a problem.
The MD’s first reaction wasn’t about the feed at all:
“Lee, it is obvious to me that you have stopped washing the pig barns, water usage is down so much there can be no other reason.”
Water use had dropped because healthier pigs drink and waste less, not because anyone had cut corners on cleaning. But it’s a fair example of what happens when the numbers on a spreadsheet get read without the context of what’s happening in the barn.
The lesson here is: you can’t manage a pig barn sat behind a computer looking at numbers.
This is the same kind of overlooked operational detail AgriSwine Asia looks for on every engagement, whether in production consulting or an independent pig farm audit. Get in touch to talk through your own operation.