Nutritional formulas are a critical part of profitable pig production. It is generally accepted that feed represents between 60-70% of production costs and affects many aspects of the business, including:
Ingredient procurement
Quality control
Feed mill processes
Scheduling
Transportation and logistics
Feed delivery to the farm
Equipment purchase
Business planning
Feed is the most important input for the production system and is the key driver of pig performance.
This underscores the importance of accurately defining nutrient specifications for each production phase to attain animal performance objectives, a critical process accomplished through diet formulation.
After determining nutritional requirements and formulating diets, the temptation to think, “they’re completed, and we can forget about them,” may arise.
However, it is crucial to understand that nutrient content and ingredient prices are dynamic and continuously fluctuating.
Taking this into consideration, the following question arises: Is it necessary to revise my dietary formulations?
There are many reasons to consider reformulating or updating diets. Some of these include:
Changes in raw material prices
Raw material availability: for example, if there was poor performance in the harvest of a certain ingredient like soybean hulls, it means the producer must plan to decrease the volume of this ingredient in their diets.
Nutrient content: can be determined by conducting quality control analyses such as percentages of crude protein, fats, moisture percentage, among others.
Moreover, variations in pork prices impact profitability, necessitating the reformulation of diets to adapt to production cost changes and uphold profit margins.
Illustratively, in instances of reduced carcass selling prices, the diminished profit margin may influence the incorporation of substitute ingredients like soybean oil, white grease, and additives aimed at enhancing weight gain and feed conversion.
Furthermore, there is another important question we must ask ourselves:
What is the lowest per-ton cost savings in the diet that would prompt me to consider making a change?
The process of changing diets is time-consuming and impacts ingredient procurement requirements. Hence, it is crucial to set a minimum threshold for reducing diet costs to prevent frequent changes.
Some systems update ingredient prices and raw material quality i...
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