Distiller's grains may be getting all the attention, but this 21,000-sow, farrow-to-finish operation has found many useful by-product feeds.

Jimmy Tosh, owner of Tosh Farms, Henry, TN, wasn't worried when he spotted employees nibbling muffin mix bought from a nearby ADM plant and intended for his swine rations.

“It was very good; I was eating it myself,” Tosh quips of the tasty blueberry and strawberry crumbles in the mix. Tosh says at $50/ton, the mix was a good buy, available because it was an overrun or out-of-date batch. The mix went into Tosh' s finishing rations as a corn substitute.

Tosh built the 21,000-sow business from a small feeder pig finishing enterprise he started while a student at the University of Tennessee. After expanding several times, he constructed a commercial-sized feedmill in 1996. That's when he started looking for alternatives to lower diet costs.

His first departure from a traditional corn-soy diet came with the addition of wheat middlings, or “midds,” in gestation rations, where energy requirements are relatively low. Midds are the screenings, bran, germ and flour remnants from a nearby flour mill. Tosh originally used the midds in gestation rations, where energy requirements are relatively low.

Today the farm uses wheat midds in most rations, including up to 12% in finishing rations.

Over the years, 30-40% of Tosh's diets have included alternative feeds. Hominy feed, a by-product from a Jackson, TN, plant that processes corn meal and grits, is a mainstay. Rich in energy, hominy feed consists of the endosperm and hulls from white corn.

“It will almost always price into a ration,” says Tosh, who uses a weekly spreadsheet to compare costs for various diets and ingredients.

Economics

In early January 2007, Tosh was in good shape regarding feed costs — $120.96/ton for his primary finishing ration. Ingredients were contracted in 2006 with corn priced at $98.20/ton, soybean meal at $181.86/ton, hominy feeds for $62/ton and wheat midds at $71/ton.

But Tosh was bracing himself for an inevitable feed cost hike. He figured he'd pay more than $100/ton for hominy feeds in his next contract, but says it would still price into the ration. (See Tables 1 and 2 for a cost comparison of Tosh's standard finishing ration with and without hominy. Costs are based on market prices the last week of January.) “By-products seem to become much more attractive when you've got high grain prices,” Tosh says. “When you've got cheap corn, the savings are not anywhere near as great as when you've got high corn prices.”

Tosh's goal is to feed a least-cost ration that takes advantage of inventories already purchased. “We set a minimum and maximum for feeds we have on hand; you can only feed so much of certain items. In a true least-cost ration, you wouldn't set a minimum,” he says.

Pet Food and Other Options

Tosh and his ingredient buyer, Robby Hamilton, consult with nutritionist Matt Steidinger, Swine Nutrition Services, Anchor, IL, to balance diets and evaluate new ingredients. “We are not afraid to change the rations if something comes along,” Tosh says.

A few years back, Steidinger suggested incorporating pet food by-products.

“I thought it was a great idea and started putting costs in — it saved quite a bit of money,” Tosh says. He secured a contract with a Missouri plant, purchasing mostly dog food overruns or products that didn't meet manufacturing specifications. Occasionally, cat food is also used.

Tosh describes the dog food, delivered as a ground, brown meal, as “very good, very high protein and high fat.” Finishing rations contain 6% of the meal. “The thing that makes dog food attractive is price, and the fact that it contains ruminant meat and bone meal, which can't be fed to cattle,” he says.

That gives pork producers good buying power — when it's available, he says. “It runs in cycles and availability has been a problem.”

Tosh and Hamilton are planning to replace the dog food with dried distiller's grains with solubles (DDGS), which Tosh has used in the past. They are working on a contract with an ethanol plant about 100 miles from the mill.

Tosh Farms already has feed trucks headed to the area, so the back haul will minimize trucking costs.

Currently, overhead storage at the farm's mill is being expanded. Until that's complete, they only have room to store three by-product feeds — midds, hominy feeds and one other option, such as dog food or DDGS. Any other alternatives are purchased in smaller quantities and used immediately, he explains.

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