Extension swine specialists provide action lists to lessen the impact of escalating feed costs.

There is little doubt that the ethanol boom is driving corn prices higher, which will mean permanently higher feed costs for pork producers, declares Mike Tokach, Extension swine specialist at Kansas State University (KSU).

The sudden price hike caught producers a bit off guard. But he says they shouldn't delay exploration of all of the available alternatives.

“There are deals to be found, and people need to be watchful for opportunities. Unfortunately, as you'd expect, as the price of corn goes up, the price of all of the alternatives goes up at the same time,” Tokach says.

Tokach offers four tips to help manage current feeding programs:

• Properly adjust feeders to minimize wastage. “Of course, proper feeder adjustment becomes much more valuable when you have high-priced corn, so make sure feeders are doing their job. This is also an opportune time to replace any old feeders or feeders that don't adjust properly. If you can't get the feed efficiency your counterparts in the industry are getting, then you certainly want to take a hard look at whether feeders are causing the problem, and if so, consider making a capital investment in new feeders,” he stresses.

• Check particle size of the diet. Reducing particle size improves feed efficiency because digestive enzymes can access feed particles more easily, enabling pigs to improve growth performance when consuming similar amounts of feed, he explains. Fineness of grind is limited by flowability in the feed system.

  “Some of our grow-finish farms are starting to push that particle size down closer to 600 microns, because going from 700 to 600 microns is worth about 60¢/pig with current corn prices,” Tokach adds. Producers need a roller mill to reduce grain fineness to that level and still have acceptable flowability.

  As corn prices rise, producers will also start taking a hard look at pelleting. “We avoided pelleting diets in most of our Midwestern hog operations up to now, because of concerns over cost and problems with poor pellet quality. But pelleting allows you to get the benefits and feed efficiency of finer particle size, and your feed system can still handle it,” he says.

• Make sure diets are thoroughly mixed. Poorly mixed diets translate into poor growth performance and feed efficiency due to inadequate utilization of the diet.

  “We certainly have found problems on operations either not allowing long enough mixing time, or still adding feed ingredients during the mixing process. Consequently, there is not enough mixing time from the last ingredient being added until the feed is dumped out of the mixer,” Tokach states.

  Adding alternative ingredients that are higher in fiber (dried distiller's grains with solubles) or lower in energy (fat) requires a lot more feed to be mixed, which results in less time to get the job done. Don't short-circuit the mixing process. Take the time to do it properly.

  Also, don't short-circuit nutrition in late-finishing diets. It is commonly thought that one of the easiest ways to reduce the cost of the diet is to lower the protein levels or the amount of amino acids in late-finishing diets. Tokach says that is a total mistake right now, for two reasons:

  “First, feed efficiency becomes poorer very quickly if you go below the pig's lysine requirements in the late finisher. You will actually increase feed usage considerably when you do that.”

  The second problem with reducing protein content late in finishing is that soybean meal prices have not risen nearly as fast as corn prices. There is not as much savings to be gained as it appears, meaning producers can end up increasing feed usage and cost by reducing amino acids in the diet.

• Double check to ensure that feed budget targets are being met. Don't overfeed diets. Check feed efficiency to see if it is on target with the feed budget. If not, it often means that previous, more expensive diets have been overfed.

“This has really become an issue with diseases like porcine circovirus-associated disease (PCVAD), when you've got a disease that is causing 8-12% mortality,” Tokach emphasizes. “People set up their feed budgets based on the original number of hogs placed in the barn. With PCVAD, most of those pigs die 4-6 weeks into the finishing phase, resulting in overfeeding the feed budget the rest of the way through finishing.” When that happens, remember to adjust the budget to reflect the actual finishing barn inventory, he suggests.

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