Casey Introduction
0:00:00
Welcome to the Real P3 podcast, hosted by me, Casey Bradley. We're diving into the heart of animal nutrition and health, broadening our scope with insights from the industry leaders and experts from the Sun Swine Group and Swine Nutrition Management. Join us for a journey of discovery and practical advice as we navigate the ever evolving world of monogastrics. Produced by the Sun Swine Group and sponsored by Swine Nutrition Management, this podcast is your gateway to the latest in animal nutrition, where every episode promises to be as enlightening as it is inspiring.
Tune in, learn, and grow with us. This is the Real P3 Podcast, where science meets heart and knowledge transforms into action. It has been a cold January and maybe a little warm for us in different hemispheres around the world in the swine industry and animal nutrition space, but I'm excited to have one of the founding partners of The Real P3, Willen Steyn, back to discuss BANFF support and his research he's been doing on space allowance in swine. So stay tuned.
Well it is so nice to connect with you. I am sorry I couldn't join you in Canada at Banff. Everybody looked like they had a great time but well I would love for you to share your experience. Maybe just kind of start out with the overall overview of the Banff work seminar this year and then let's dive into your research here later on that you presented if that works for you.
Willem Steyn
0:01:43
Hi, Casey. Always good to be back. It's a new fresh year, new ideas. A nice December summer holiday in South Africa, so we all race it out. I spent a part of my summer holiday two weeks in Banff, Canada, which on itself was quite an experience. So that was good. BANFF itself, first time in Banff was really good. What I actually enjoy from that seminar, it's a lot more applied science, quite a few producers. There's always a lot of more applied kind of work and knowledge being shared, less scientific, which I think was just more appealing to the crowd that attended the seminar, which was really good. And also part of the job description when we selected those speakers to be able to make it practical and applied. That was good. So kind of what were some of the main speakers at Banff this year? Like any seminar a couple of keynote speakers focusing on the markets which I find interesting and again it's I mean we're in this side of the world and we had a tough year last year and then you look back and say sure we were not the only ones that had a tough year if you look at the North American industry, the Canadian industry, everybody is at this moment losing quite a bit of money and I think that also it's good for me to listen to what everybody is saying that we can share ideas and share notes how we're going to be more profitable and again that's a lot of the work that we do here in South Africa is exactly based on that. To challenge a bit the status quo and rethink what we are doing to see in the end of the day we need to think out of the box to make sure that we are more profitable in what we do. I mean it's one thing to lose money for one or two months, but to keep on losing money at some point, it's just not possible to continue.
Willem Steyn
0:03:42
And I think we are very close to the edge if things are not turning around. But again, it pushes us as scientists slash nutritionists to really think out of the box. And I think that's a lot of those ideas also that came out at BANFF. A lot of guys focusing especially on this, rethink how we need to look at things. A lot of modeling, a lot of technology things. I actually attended that session, the breakout session and it's really interesting if you look at the economical tools they bring in your finances, how your production information, your nutrition information from a company from Canada, how they actually calculate it and you start looking at numbers different it will for sure drive your behavior and make your decision making a little bit different than what we're doing maybe in the future than we have done in the last couple of months. And I think for me that was that was the interesting part in this.
Casey Bradley
0:04:28
Definitely. And I think that's a good segway into what you presented on because when I read your paper from the proceedings and you know we do chat every once in a while about research and stuff and I know you were working a lot on enzymes but the space allowance in the US. South Dakota State recently has done some, Kansas State, different universities really looked at it, but you put a new calculation in there that really drives home the point of how to utilize not only margin over feed costs, and that pig value, but your whole facility value. And can you kind of explain your thought process on space allowance and kind of what's set the stage for you to run these trials?
Willem Steyn
0:05:21
I think maybe to start from the beginning, what I like to explain is that, I mean, again, we always look in our research facility here and in Bainesville Swine Research Unit, we look at the challenges which we are faced with and we try to be, let's say, act on those and try to find a bit of answers to a couple of those challenges. And one of the challenges that we are faced with is the challenge of that the born alive in the last couple of years, call it the last five years, have increased tremendously due to genetic progress, call it what you want to call it. But if I look at the number of pigs in the last couple of five years, it's amazing what's happening. If you look at the age of the average building in South Africa and a big part of the country, but also in the Americas, it's not new buildings. It's crazy expensive to build new buildings. And a lot of the existing structures is built many, many moons ago. And those buildings are for sure not built to be able to accommodate 34, 35 weaned pigs per sow per year. That's for sure not the case. So I look at it and then say, okay, how are we going to react on this? Are we building new space? Can we afford it? For sure not in the economical climate where we're operating at this moment. So what's the game plan? So the biggest game plan and the easiest game plan is just to reduce your cell numbers. So that's easy to do, relatively easy to do. You reduce your cell numbers and you make sure that you fill your weaner grower facility to capacity. But again, if you walk through, and I have a couple of those clients, and we start thinking about this a year or two ago when I walked through a farrowing house one day and I looked at it and said, sure. I said, guys, did you decide to stop farming? Did you stop mating yourselves? What's going on here? Because it seems a bit like it looks like a ghost town here in the farrowing house. He said, no, it's just, I mean, because I mean, we need to be able to follow wiener and grower houses and that's the space that we have. And then I also like to think about if I have a million bucks in the bank, what do I do with it? Where do I invest it? Ultimately why I'm investing that million bucks is what I will be looking for is return on investment, return on capital investment. That's ultimately what you do. If you're going to build a bakery or you buy an apartment or whatever you want to do with your money in the end, you want to see how much you can get back from that investment and we need to start thinking about that because they're sitting in asset, they're sitting in investment, which we only utilize in 70% of it because we have a problem with space. So then we start thinking, okay, how can we run our farrowing houses to full capacity, produce those extra pickets and then start thinking downstream how we can make plans. One easiest plan maybe is to produce that excessive amount of pickets and you are lucky in your side of the world you can just sell it to a trader potentially or sell it to a grow out scheme. So that's one way to optimize at least the farrowing buildings. But we don't have that system in place. So, we say, okay, what out of the box tools we can get to make sure that we can get those pigs through the weaners and through the growers.
Casey Bradley
I was just gonna say that is how we've handled that in the U.S. but reading your paper I'm unsure if that is actually the economical strategy that we need to be looking at and I would say I hope the American swine producers are listening to this and really kind of understand because not everybody got to go to Banff and so I think you're on to something that every producer in the world needs to contemplate, right? Building more facilities is not, I don't have a research farm because of the cost of building. Like, the site was cheap, I could fill it with research, but to remodel it and build it into the facility I want, I can't afford that, right? It's expensive.
1
0:09:11
Yeah. That's how you need to look at it. And then we thought what we basically then did, Casey, is we ran a couple of scenarios in the research barn. It was like, okay, let's fill, let's double stockpile, let's increase our capacity. Because if you look at effectively at a grow finishing unit, if you would calculate the K value, that's, I mean, that's in papers which we use and you run those numbers and connect that with live body weight, if you have a thousand square meters facility, if you run in the K value, I mean, in my calculation, in my proceedings, you can easily run, let's call it a thousand, thousand, one hundred picks. So on a thousand picks, you'd be running one square meter per pick. But let's say you run way less than this, you can run a thousand, one hundred, thousand, two hundred picks. But if you look at the loss of, let's, if you look at, if you would do that on a growth curve and you see, actually you can start with three and a half thousand picks if you want to. But because of we work it out on space requirement to pick on target market weight, there's a 2000 picks that we're not utilizing. So that's where we start thinking. I mean, I know it's maybe a simple explanation, but it seems a bit of, we're not efficient, we're not using that space. We put little pigs in a huge space, we blow a lot of parathium and heat to keep them warm because they can't cope with it because we want to do some, I mean, because we have to do it because in the end of the day, we're going to market those pigs and that's what we need to do. So that was one of the questions that came up. How can we more efficiently use the space of our buildings when pigs are young? And that was one thing and that was one of our treatments and we'd call it double stocking. We double stock in the first couple of weeks and then basically you create extra space in the back end and you can move, it's an extra move and maybe extra wash, but you just use your space more efficiently in the beginning and you can actually have one extra week so you can produce heavier carcasses and in that way you can produce extra amount of tonnage of pork per square metre. And just by optimising your space in the first couple of weeks when pigs are young. And it's actually saving you money because what we've seen is you actually don't have to eat those buildings because there's enough pigs in those buildings to eat those buildings anyway. And the temperature records is a lot more stable and not jumping up and down. And one of the other treatments that we've done is then say, okay, but let's run a scenario where we run a full farrowing house, we produce 105% and sweat our assets and really work them hard and produce extra amount of pickets and take them through the facility. And then you start playing with these stopping strategies and start taking picks out at younger ages. And if you look at the profitability of those picks that you do take out at a younger age, they're for sure not as profitable and margin over feed costs when we redo the calculations, then you start looking at things differently. It's really about how much pork am I producing per square metre? And if you start counting those pigs and that amount of kilos on existing space, then the calculation looks completely different. And in our treatments, for example, in one of those treatments, you can see the average carcass weight was a little bit lower and the feed conversion was a little bit higher. But those buildings where we're really packing the animals and using different topping strategies, we were producing on a thousand square meters, we were producing 25 to 30 tons of extra pork in existing space. And I think that's how we need to start looking at things.
Casey Bradley
0:12:45
It's interesting your take on this, because we've also looked at double stocking here and producers used to do that. As a nutritionist, my problem I have with double stocking and even some of these winged to finish barns that I work with that have wet, dry feeders and we look at feed space, right? And you either calculate it, we used to calculate it how many pigs per feeder and now it's like how many inches of feeder space per pig. But I always feel that we're shorting the nursery pigs to have enough space, but you're still utilizing a nursery and then into finishing for this double stocking.
Willem Steyn
0:13:22
No, we start stocking at 10 weeks of age, so it is in our grow facility buildings. But if you look at the space feeder space requirement per pig, again, on what kind of pig or what age of pig is that calculated? Because I'm just double stocking my animals in the first four or five weeks, let's say from 10 to 15 weeks of age. And we did see a bit of a growth reduction compared to the treatment where we didn't stock them. But if you look at the overall results, there was almost no difference. So there should be a bit of an effect, 100% the case. But if you look at your feed space requirements, it's not done for a 25, 30 kilo pig. If those feeds are, if the feeders are running at lip 24, 7 feet, I mean, there's more than enough space for those size picklers in even an existing system. I have a few guys that's doing it commercially. The biggest advantage in the way that we think about double stocking is that you use the same, always the same buildings to double stock. That's why I'm saying about that extra move. If you work your pig flows out, you always go, you always use the same buildings for double stocking and then after that you move them, you move them then out and down the line. If you do that, you can easily invest in one or two or a couple of extra feeders in those four buildings that you are going to double stock because after that they move out. So it's not that you have to invest in extra amount of feeders right through your grower facility. It's really investing a bit in that four specific or five specific buildings where you are going to double stock those pigs. But again...
Casey Bradley
0:15:01
Yeah, I just wanted to clarify that because we've tried that on the nursery side and I can tell you from a nursery perspective and a winged finish barn, there's something to really consider there. And I'd say some of my disadvantages on the nursery side is too many pigs per pen. You don't find the fallouts and the sick pigs as easily. The staff has issues with that. And then just feeder space and training pigs how to eat. There is from a value standpoint of utilizing that space, efficiencies to pick up. But I think the management of that early weaned pig and we're weaning a little bit younger than you and probably a lighter pig as well. But I really love the fact of considering this from a grow finish standpoint.
Willem Steyn
0:15:52
Yeah. Now for us, it makes sense. If you look at your stall, your biggest cost is a stall within those buildings. That's for sure the case. And we start looking at total amount of pork produced per building squared, margin over feed cost per square, these kind of calculations, then for sure it will change the behavior and will change how we think about things and what we should be chasing and what we should not be chasing.
Casey Bradley
0:16:19
So how does this change it from a nutrition perspective? Are there some things you think we need to do different in that type of model?
Willem Steyn
0:16:26
That's a good question. It's something that we all will and will be looking at. So when we are running the one that we did now, the space and playing around with these different scenarios is the first of a series of trials that we will be looking at different topping strategies and space allowance strategies. And one of these components is nutrition, is feeding. As to see should we be feeding these double stock pigs maybe different? Should we feed them, let's say a higher concentrated diet and will we pick up differences versus not? So that's the net because we do see in growth, we lost about, I think it was 70 grams of growth on average in the double stock versus the non-double stock building, 70 grams per day. But if you look at the overall results when those pigs were moved out, in the end, if you look at the total results, we didn't get it back. And it basically gives you the double stock. Even if you do lose a bit of growth in the beginning, it gives you the possibility to take pigs one week older without having additional building space. So basically if you say pigs are grabbing a kilo a day, you're selling on a life weight basis, you're selling seven kilos on average, additional times the number of pig times exactly the same amount of square meters. And if you do that calculation, that makes a lot more sense than losing potentially this 50 or 70 grams of gain per day in the beginning.
Casey Bradley
0:17:48
Now what I did notice in your proceedings, mortality, aggression, did you see any differences on that from a big old pig?
Willem Steyn
0:17:55
No difference. I think we, I mean no we didn't. And I think, I got that question a few times. I think the biggest reason for this is there's a big push from, I mean a lot of our companies is European, genetic companies is European based but also I mean American based, is there's a big push to breed that sociable pig, a pig that can cope with other pigs in a group, a pig that's robust. But the social factor in this is also important. If you look at the tailbiting discussions in Europe, if you look at the group housing and free furrowing cages, all you need a pig that can live with his sublux. And there's a lot of ways how they are doing it and really interesting ways how they are breeding these social pigs. But pigs will become even more so. They are already a social animal, but they will, because we will for many years, we always selecting the fast growing, most likely the bully and the pen. So, I mean, if you keep on selecting those kind of pigs, you will get bullies. But that for sure changed. They're not looking at individual pen animals, but they look at our pens. Pigs are performing within the group and what is the effect on a pig, on its pen mates. So with that selection, or again, I'm not, I mean, genetics is for sure not my thing, but I do think this is the direction where these guys are already heading for a long time and we just don't see anything. We just see the pigs are fine, they're coping. I think where we do need to, what we do need to, let's say, recognize, I think if you look also at the growth performance, feed conversions, also those trends, I mean, if you look what pigs are doing with the amount of feed they eat, it's also incredible. To be able to achieve that, achieve that. I think these pigs need to have a crazy active fast metabolic rate and with that comes a lot of heat production. So I think that is for sure important to consider that and we are considering that, that at some point, I mean in the beginning, we still 100% within our lines. We're not, we're not, we're not under the welfare ethical boundary of overdoing it and what we can do and what the space allowance is, what we can give pigs. It's only just utilising the space better. Even with double stocking, if you look at the requirement of those pigs based on a weight basis, we're still well within our guidelines and recommendations. It's actually just using it more efficiently. So it's not saying we're overdoing it, but again, even as pigs go older, we need to make sure that we do give them that space, that they are able to perform. And we know that, but also to make sure that we can get rid of that excessive eat. And that is important. And that's something that we do need to look at more. But in our case, after 14, 15 weeks, took out the pigs in the double stocking. Actually, they are doing excellent. And in the other treatments where we're overstocking for longer and then start topping and removing pigs as we go, there again, it's actually no issue, absolutely no issue.
Casey Bradley
0:21:01
And kind of talking to you a little bit through this, and it just brings my mind back to here in the US and my career from a nutritionist standpoint, it was always about average daily gain and FCR. And that's kind of what we always talked about in nutrition. But then it switched to livability because you do the calculations on livability or your mortality. And that's where the true value is in your system in that. And it really, I think, goes back into having these conversations. And I mean, this whole paper and this whole idea of talking about this through you is like, we totally really need to look further in depth also on our research and it's not always about FCR or average daily gain. It's really about the pounds per pork of that square meter and you start calculating that into and making decisions based on that. You're doing it from an economic perspective of optimizing your farrowing houses but when we look at sustainability, we like you said, those pigs produce enough heat. You don't even have to heat your facilities.
Willem Steyn
0:22:07
No, they don't.
Casey Bradley
0:22:09
So when we think about that, in my mind, that reduces even carbon emissions, a sustainability feature.
Willem Steyn
0:22:17
No, that's for sure the case. And I mean, it's it's not just old. I mean, even saw a few presentations in Banff as well, where the focus is so hard on feed conversion and feed and average daily gain making decisions, which I think it's terrible. If you look at our treatments, though, if you would look at technical performance and average daily gain of feed conversion, the treatment where we kept 10 pigs in a pen from the beginning to the end, didn't touch them. I mean, their technical performance is excellent. It's absolutely amazing. If I only had that information in front of me, then I would for sure go and say this is, there's no alternative, this is the way to go. And if you look at the treatment where we start playing around with stocking, you know, they're not getting the best performance. But if you consider, if you look at the economics and you plug that in, you say sure, on this treatment I'm selling 30 tons extra pork on the same square meters, maybe my weight's a bit down and maybe my feed conversion's a little bit higher, but if you look at bottom line, you are well, well, I mean far away from a control treatment in this case.
Casey Bradley
0:23:18
Oh definitely. You mentioned one, getting that question a lot as well on mortality from some people that listened to your presentation. What was some other feedback or questions that you received on your research?
Willem Steyn
0:23:31
In terms of questions, no not really. It was, there was not a lot of interaction. Afterwards a couple of good discussions from producers that came and say they like the idea and they're going back and start looking at it because you look at batch sheets and you look at what was the performance and I will reconvert this and look at it differently and see what they can do. And as again, the problem is real. A lot of these guys are running their furrowing houses at 70, 80% capacity and that's not a nice site. So they will go back. The thing is we focus on growers and we focus on farrowing, but the wiener house will quickly become your bottleneck as well. So I have a couple of examples where guys are putting double decks in wiener houses and things to be able to get that extra amount of pigs through the wiener as well. And it works well. I mean, again, farmers are amazingly innovative. We see guys putting up double decks and the pigs walk up on the desk, there's a feeder there. Just exactly same space, same building, year or there, but fine tuning on the ventilation system and they can easily house that extra amount of pigs. And I like those kind of ideas. I really do.
Casey Bradley
0:24:41
I love it. Double deck pigs. Canada's really known for their double deck poultry and I'm like, they got something going. And we talk talking about the multi-story sow farms in China, it is still utilizing that square footage properly because you, I mean the barn costs the pits are the expensive part, but putting in a double deck and extra feeder is, you know, very minimal investment to keep these systems flowing.
Willem Steyn
0:25:08
Yeah.
Casey Bradley
0:25:09
Well, very intriguing. Any other last-minute thoughts in your mind for Banff or even things to share from the other side of the world since we haven't been together on the real team three lately?
Willem Steyn
0:25:21
No, not much. We're excited. We have a couple of good research trials lined up that's quite excited and it's all of it is really about looking at how we can be more efficient, how we can really challenge that status quo and what we're doing. Pushing lower vitamins, mineral levels is the next trial. We're looking at space again, the trial after that. We're looking at alternative ingredients that we never thought would be the alternative ingredients. So a lot of the things that we are looking at is to say, okay, should we start doing things a little bit different that we've done five, six years ago? And again, I always say that we're very lucky to be able to farm with pigs or work with pigs because they actually have quite a... compared to chickens for sure, they have the ability to utilize and are very robust animals. And they can utilize these ingredients and we can do, and not saying that we can push them a lot harder, but they for sure are robust and the ability to do a lot more than what we think they can.
Casey Bradley
0:26:18
Well, awesome. It was really great to catch up with you. And hopefully I have on my list for 2024 to not only interview you again possibly but also your team so to keep up to date with what you guys are working on and learning more from different world perspectives in the swine industry. Thanks for being back.
Willem Steyn
Thank you, Casey.
Casey Bradley
0:26:44
Well everyone I hope you have a great week. Stay safe. Keep doing your best. Keep spreading happy messages. Instead of saying, if you get a chance today, hug a pig for me, hug a person, hug a dog, hug a chicken. Just have a great week. I'll see you next week on the Real P3. hug a chicken. Just have a great week. I'll see you next week on the Real P3.
