Casey
0:00:
Welcome to the Real P3 Podcast. Now co-hosted by myself, Casey Bradley, and my esteemed colleague, Philip Johan Odendaal from Zimbabwe. As we reintroduce the global agribusiness dimension to the Real P3, we aim to connect you with extraordinary individuals who inspire us to become unstoppable in both life and business. While I continue to shed light on the latest in animal nutrition and health, focusing on the U.S. perspective, Johan will open the doors to his vast global network as a Neufeld Scholar. Embark with us on this enriched journey of discovery and practical insights. Our expanded view will navigate through the intricate world of agribusiness, powered by the collaborative efforts of Animistic and Swine Nutrition Management. This podcast is your bridge to groundbreaking ideas in animal nutrition, agriculture, and beyond, promising episodes that are not only enlightening, but deeply inspiring. Tune in to grow and transform with us. Welcome to the Real P3 Podcast where science and art converge, empowering knowledge to spring into action.
Johan
0:01:22
Hi everyone, so today we're with Dr. Andrew Tucker from South Africa. So we're in Zim, Andrew's come up to do a consult for us so we're traveling around all our farms, taking some blood samples of goats. Andrew, how are you finding Zim so far?
Andrew
0:01:36
Yeah, all good, thanks. I'd like to be driving in the bush in Zim on some dirt roads. Long trip, two hours to get to this farm on most of the interesting dirt roads.
Johan
0:01:47
Yeah, so we're actually doing this podcast while we're driving because we don't think we're going to have much time to sit down later. And we thought maybe it would be good while we're driving because if we see anything interesting, I think Zim is very different to South Africa as well. So if Andrew sees anything profound, he's welcome to gospel, just think of it.
Andrew
0:02:03
Johan, watch the road.
Johan
0:02:05
So Dr. Tucker, I think your background is veterinary, you studied in adult support and then if I'm correct, you went to the UK after that?
Andrew
0:02:15
Yeah, I qualified 20 odd years ago and I spent two years in the UK after that, one year doing dogs and cats companion animal surgery and then I did a year at a pig practice, a practice that just does commercial pigries. I grew up on a pigry in South Africa, so I kind of inevitably knew I'd end up doing pig work. So, I spent two years in the UK and then have been back in South Africa ever since. And yeah, I work for a practice, we've got a practice with six vets specializing just in commercial pigs and we work all through Africa from Nigeria and Cameroon in the north and right down to Cape Town in the south. So most of our work is in South Africa, but we do do quite a few other African countries as well. Which I think have some pretty interesting stories in themselves, some of your Nigeria stories especially get me going, like even as a Zumba, like what the heck. Africa's got some interesting countries, interesting cultures and interesting people. People often say, oh, what's it like living in Africa? You can't answer that because Africa, it's completely different. Whether you're in the north in a Muslim country or in the south in a Christian country or in West Africa or even neighbors like Zimbabwe and South Africa are completely different. So it depends where you are. But here we are. We love it. It's our place and now all good.
Johan
0:03:40
And what is the safety of going to countries like Nigeria?
Andrew
0:03:48
I think people are worried about Zimbabwe. We know it's fine and it's safe, so we do know media overblows a lot of stuff. But personally, I wouldn't be comfortable going to Nigeria I think it's like anywhere in the world, it depends where you go. And there are places that are a complete no-go zone and there are other places where it is very different, it's safe. And some places are safe, some places aren't. It depends where you are. I think I find the... I don't get an armed guard or you see the big oil guys going over and maybe they go to more dangerous spots, politically heated spots, and they'll leave the airport with tinted windows, armed guards, AK-47s, and that's how they travel. I get a vehicle from the farm that picks me up and we do about a six-hour drive into the middle of Nigeria. And yeah, the roads are incredibly dangerous.
The way people drive as well as what's happening on the roads. You do come across an oil truck or a fuel truck that's been ambushed and on a corner and it rolls and people are stealing diesel and the police are shooting and there is, I don't think I've been on a trip there where I haven't heard a gunshot. I personally have never been really threatened but it happen around you. So, you know, countries like that are dangerous and you've got to be careful where you go but most countries complete the opposite. You know, a funny story about Nigeria is I am, you know, driving with a few Nigerians and, you know, they'll say, so where are you from? And I'll say South Africa and then they, oh, you, you, Joburg, that's dangerous. How do you live in that place? And I'm like, dude, well, you don't want to go to Nigeria. I'm not scared of Joburg. Why are you scared of Joburg? But Janisburg in itself, if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, is very dangerous, as would be New York or South Pola. I mean, big cities are big cities. And if you know where you are and know what you're doing and are careful, then we live there and don't have issues.
So it depends.
Johan
0:05:39
Yeah, so I've been with Dr. Tucker to Monopause before and he's a bit of a birder, likes to panic. A little bit.
Andrew
0:05:47
A little bit.
Johan
0:05:48
A little bit, yeah. And he came all the way to Monopause, I think to try and spot the bomb's spine tail, like a little swallow, swift type of bird. And the first time he spots one, there was an elephant right next to the car. Andrew sees this bird, gets out the car, like, oh look there's, and I'm like, Andrew there's elephants, you like, stopped the elephant, this is the first time I saw, I can see Andrew going splashy, he's not scared of elephants, more interested in birds.
Andrew
0:06:13
And the elephant just ignored me flat, right?
Johan
0:06:14
Yeah, no, might have paused it.
Johan
0:06:15
He was also interested in the bone spines. Yeah, no, we had some interesting stories with elephants at Monopulse, fortunately that wasn't one of them. Cool, and just like today, you know, we've been driving around doing blood samples on the gilts. So can you just let us know what are we actually looking for? Why are we doing these samples?
Andrew
0:06:35
All right, so today is just some routine testing. We're doing a bit of consulting as we're going. We looked at all the data of the last few days of the farms, kind of highlighted where the weak points are, where we need to improve production on the farms. So, a lot of the consult is production-based, but we also look at health and part of the health is routine checks to make sure that the health status we've got is still in place. That's still high on the list. Yeah. So, these farms that we visit here are SPF, specific pathogen-free, and in a Zimbabwean
or South African context, that means there's quite a few pig diseases we don't have here. We don't have mycoplasma, we don't have APP, we don't have atrophic rhinitis, swine dysentery, we don't have ascaris or mange. PERS? Countrywide, we don't have PERS. In the Piggery, of course, we don't have African swine fever, although it's out here. We're driving now.
Johan
0:07:27
We're driving through a rural area and there are a bunch of piggies out.
Andrew
0:07:30
Yeah, there's pigs and there's little black feral pigs that you see across the road now and again, and those we all just presume are possible carriers. So, biosecurity on the farms is a huge thing. It's our main priority, our main focus point. They all strictly shower in, shower out, only invite the people allowed in and we know their biosecurity status when they go in so that there's enough downtime. It's shower in, no pigs from other sites. So, all the really strict biosecurity rules. And I think I do a lot of travel, Congresses, figures and stuff around the world, as you have as well, Johan and I think South Africa and these farms in Zermatt I think are on the same lines as the South African ones. We don't see biosecurity that's better than what we've got in place.
We see in other countries biosecurity that's the same. And here and there you see something that's nice. But in general, the biosecurity has been a major focus point. We've been farming in the African swine fever area forever. This is where it's endemic. So you can't farm if you don't have absolute top biosecurity. Those farmers have broken long ago and out of business. So I think biosecurity is world class. Yeah. And then you've also been looking at last year's sort of production results. Yeah. That's something we really want to spend much time on. But where are we? Where's South Africa? What are our sort of production now? So looking at winter's up here, this year we've got two units that are going to get to 33.5 winter's up here. And I think our average unit that we've had is probably sitting around 31.5 is probably the average. And looking at kilograms, carcass mass, around about an 84, 85, 86 kilogram carcass mass is what we slaughter at 22 weeks. We're not allowed to slaughter over 22 weeks on the bores because we don't castrate. So for bore change reasons, that's our limit. We can't go over 154 days and that kind of limits to the... There are some guys getting up into the high 90 kilogram carcasses, but it depends on the abattoir you're slaughtering at where they limit you. So the top guys are now going to do this year about...
Johan
0:09:38
Sorry, we just had a Muscovy duck... A Muscovy duck guy commit suicide here on CrossFit World. We all said Muscovy duck could potch us up into nothing.
Andrew
0:09:45
But the duck clearly got away and he's happy.
Johan
0:09:49
Yeah.
Andrew
0:09:50
No welfare issues yet today. So the top guys this year getting very close to 2,900 kilograms sold per supper year.
Johan
0:09:59
Yeah, so I think we were quite happy. We've got a much smaller farm, it's a 450-sar unit as a smaller farm of the group of farms we run. And for the month, okay, so I know it's just a month figure, but January they were, we had this up here at 34.9, and the current kilogram sold this up here as a cold dress master sitting on 2,700. So we felt quite proud that we've managed to get one farm into that sort of level.
Andrew
0:10:22
Yeah.
Johan
0:10:23
Okay, cool, and then Andrew, we chatted earlier about, I don't know which one I wanted to start with, but we started chatting about your background before we started the podcast, and personally was really fascinated by the fact that you're a seventh generation South African. Obviously not Afrikaans or of Dutch heritage, which is why I took the double-take,
we thought I was looking at you. So to have a Taka, that's a seventh generation South African and not being Dutch-German heritage, it's quite interesting. I'm sure there's an interesting story behind that.
Andrew
0:10:49
Yeah, so you said to me, when did my parents come to Africa? And I was like, what, man? Come on, give me some. So yeah, I am a seventh generation. My kids are now eighth generation Africans. So this is all we know. And although we've got pale skins and sometimes, you know, people, especially overseas people say, where are you from? You say South Africa. They look at you weirdly like you're a pale for Africa. There's quite a lot of us that are Africans at my heart and this is all we know. That was the last generation.
Johan
0:11:22
What year was that?
Andrew
0:11:23
So, a guy by the name of Kijitaker came out in 1850 and he came out from Canterbury in England. So, we've got quite a lot of his history written down and some photos and stuff. So, that's quite interesting. But he comes from Canterbury, just south of London. What today is the Canterbury Hotel was his dad's factory making plates. And I think you can still get some plates, antiques with a tucker crest underneath it. But yeah, he was orphaned at the age of 13. I think England in those days was, if I'm rambling, you must tell me to shut up, yo. But England in those days was battling economically.
I think they'd overextended themselves with colonialism, I think. And people were looking for opportunities elsewhere. He was, I think he lost his dad when he was seven and his mom when he was 13. So at 13, he was orphaned in a pretty poor country. And he managed to, through Family Connections, get a job as a farmhand in East London, one of the Eastern provinces in South Africa. So he writes about how he spent three months on the ship and gets to East London Harbour. He's quite an artist and he's got quite a bit of his art in his memoirs, but he befriended staff and the captain and stuff on the ship by drawing them, doing portraits and whatnot. And he writes how he doesn't want to get off the ship when he gets there because he's become accustomed. He's got meals there. And so you don't want to get off the ship. And then there's got this daunting continent that you're getting onto that you've only heard stories about. There's no photographs, there's no Google, you know. So anyway.
Johan
0:12:56
and... No phones, no...
Andrew
0:12:57
So he got met at the harbour and into an ox wagon as a transport and he spends a month going to over the Seerberge, a set of mountains there, which these days you would do in your car in an hour. And he spends a month in the back of an ox wagon getting taken to the farm where he's going to work. And then, yeah, long story, but he's RT and he ends up – the diamond rush starts up in the northern part of the country and he ends up at a town called Kimberley, which is the largest man-hand dug hole in the world. It's a hole dug by spade for people, prospectors digging out diamonds and he ends up there as a cartographer drawing the mine and all the lots and where people obviously pay to dig, you would have to draw and see who can dig where. So ends up there and gets the national type job and starts up and ends up buying a farm south of Joburg and the story goes on from there.
Johan
0:13:54
Yeah, but the farm part of the story actually was really interesting to me because I haven't really heard a version like this before where the farm was originally owned by your family and then just tell us how you guys lost the farm, what circumstances?
Andrew
0:14:05
Yeah, so it was owned, it was called Concordia and it was south of Jo'burg and when the previous government in South Africa set up different areas for the group areas, I think it was called different areas for different races to live, the area that that farm was taken away and re-zoned as kind of a homeland area.
Johan
0:14:36
Where people compensated?
Andrew
0:14:37
No, there was no compensation. You were just living in the wrong place. Sorry, off you go.
Johan
0:14:41
Yeah, so I've actually never heard of a story like that. Yeah, the land reform was always like, you know, not like in a part that government moving and displacing white people, which is interesting. Guys, I understand this is far history, it's long ago, but it is interesting, and it is
history, nevertheless. Okay, so now we're into lighter topics. We thought, what do we speak about today on this podcast, which you've already cracked open a few eggs in, I'm sure. If any questions come through after this, I can always fire them off on an email to Andrew or answer what I can, because so many of these comments or whatever we talk about can be so far into the world people know. But what we did want to unpack today was our mortality disposal in the fig trees, especially on our main farm where there's 2,200 sows. I think maybe foreign to a lot of people in that we actually have a vulture, we call it a vulture restaurant and we feed pig mortalities to about 400 white-backed vultures. How important is that, Andrew, and what sort of contribution do you feel we play?
Andrew
0:15:37
No, I think it's making a huge difference. So we've got five or six vultures endemic to this region, the Southern Africa, and all of them are listed as critically endangered. So all of them in trouble, some of them might not be around by the end of our lifetime. So some of them are in real danger and they don't get the, you know, they're not as pretty as the elephant or the rhino, so they don't get the credit or the attention that it needs. But yeah, the critical part of the environment, cleaning up carcasses, cleaning up mortalities, decreasing then spread of viruses and bacteria, simply by consuming the problem and the threats to them are, one is poisoning. So a lot of poachers and things will poison carcasses. So you, for example, a few years ago had 400 odd white-backed vultures on a elephant carcass, I think in the Capriti. And what happens there is, you know, the guys poach the carcass and then the anti-poaching teams if they see certain vultures, they'll know where to go. So the guys will lace the carcass with poison and the vultures land but they don't take off.
Andrew
0:16:43
So there's a lot of that kind of stuff going around unfortunately. There's also a mooty trade, so this is the kind of traditional medicine, right? Yeah, traditional African medicine. So, vultures are pretty sought after in Muti. There's all sorts of beliefs about, you know, if you drink from its skull, you get vision and all these things we don't need to go into, but they do have a value in the Muti trade. And then a big one is power lines. Aside the people killing their vultures, there's all these power lines that we use to have electricity and, you know, the smaller ones, vultures, if they're not set up right, and most of them aren't, the vulture sits on the one wire and can touch the other wire and zap, or its mate sits on the other wire and they, you know, they'll electrocute each other. But we get a lot of electrocutions and by law, electric wires aren't supposed to be able to kill a vulture. And there are certain ways the new ones going up are safe, but the older ones aren't, and unless someone takes the electricity supplier to task, then to go and fix that specific line, then nothing gets done. And I've been very surprised that where we have reported problems, in many cases, it's
Andrew
0:17:51
had a bit of a fight or a bit of a what, but big lengths of power line have actually been changed to make them safe, which is great. And then you get the big distribution lines and those aren't a shock risk, they are a flight risk, you know, birds flying along, looking downwards, looking for prey and fly straight into a wire and then you've got broken wing or dead bird. So, those are the big risks but I think the unspoken about one is simply that these vultures are hungry.
Johan
0:18:20
Well, there's no more wildlife left.
Andrew
0:18:21
There's less food. So, you know, where there was a savannah and a lion eating a nipahla and leaving a leg, now you might have a golf estate or a maize field, you know, or game park that we've got today. A lot of the game parks have a very valuable, this is an extensive game area used for maybe hunting or something. A lot of those are very, very valuable animals on and there's very little waste. You know, the hunter comes, takes the meat, what's left behind is a skin and some bones maybe.
So, the habitat for these animals is shrinking. A lot of them are tied to their nesting sites, which may be, for example, our Cape Vulture, which is really endangered, is tied to the cliffs where they breed. So they can only hunt in a certain area, they can't simply move off. And as those areas change and become more built up, they've got less food to eat. So we get a lot of, you know, a car that drives them over, that kind of thing. So I think the idea with the pork restaurants is really that we can supply food to these vultures in an alternate way. And it's not, we're concerned and there's been discussion over, you don't want to change the habit of these vultures. You don't want a bunch of half-tamed birds sitting around eating dead pigs all day. And we see that on the tracking devices that that's not the case. These birds fly huge distances.
We had one example about two years ago. The bird is about, it's a Lapidary vulture, and it's in a vulture restaurant about an hour north, hour and a half north of Janisburg. And this bird in two weeks flies up from South Africa, a middle kind of South Africa, goes up into the top of the hills, central Zimbabwe, goes up to the Caprivi Strip, right up to the Zambezi River, comes down through Namibia and back two weeks later in the same tree at the restaurant. And you think, why did you do that for? Yeah. But quite a young bird, probably looking for territory, looking for a mate, maybe this kind of thing. And, you know, that bird's eating all over the place as it goes, but there is food in a certain place and it knows it. And when it's hungry, it can go there. We have seen that the Cape Vulture colonies nesting on cliffs nearby the vulture restaurants are increasing in number. Guys do nest counts and we've seen an increase in number. So it does seem like supplementing their diets with food is helping. But we don't want to do any damage and damage could be done if that food is dangerous.
Andrew
0:20:43
So we're very strict on there are certain medicines used for animals. It's mainly the painkillers and non-steroidals in that group that cause trouble and we don't want to go killing vultures. So where we do set up a vulture restaurant where it's in the right place, the farm's in the right place, it makes sense, it's in a safe area, we're not near power lines and we set one up, we then make sure that that farm only uses products that aren't going to cause any harm. And then we've got a safe product going out to those vultures and at any time there's food there for them. And at the moment, I think we've got about 14-odd vulture restaurants around Southern Africa, and I think we last estimated feeding about 3,500 vultures a day, wild vultures a day, that come and go very hard to get that number. But we're estimating that they're coming and going and getting some food.
Johan
0:21:30
I think that's a pretty cool thing to know as a pig farmer, you know, that we're able to do something, and that's something we don't really think about, but pig farmers are feeding 3,500 vultures, which don't have a choice. I think it definitely makes one feel good, especially knowing how endangered they are. And again, like when you say habitat, everything has changed. I remember growing up here in Zimbabwe, like where we're driving now, we're sort of in the Glendale area. We've just driven through sort of a growth point, but this farm and maize fields all over. It's a very dry year, so the maize doesn't look good. There's a lot of people everywhere, but these areas, you would have signs saying, slow down, there's antelope, you know, kudu or whatever crossing the road. And then as a young kid, we would drive past these maize fields and see more than 40 kudu holes in one herd, which is unheard of, massive, massive herds of kudu. And it's gone, you don't see anything. You know, you only see game now in actually, actual designated national parks. So again, you know, swinging that back to the vulture discussion, what do they eat? They've got nothing.
Andrew
0:22:26
Yeah, yes.
Johan
0:22:27
And then on the mortality disposal, I think something interesting is we have some fig trees in some fairly, I don't know, poorer communities, rural areas. It's still mud hut sort of habitation by humans. And we've had to find ways to incinerate our mortalities because the people don't mind if the fig's dead or if you've left them in the sun for three days before disposing or we can't have mortality because the dead things keep getting stolen. So we have to make incinerators and we've used the tobacco barn stoker which pushes coal through and we've made our own sort of homemade incinerators which I think is also
Johan
0:23:01
something that people don't think about. You have different challenges and different parts of the world and obviously, you don't know why the animal died. So you can't just secrete this meat and protein into the villages which is what you really want to do. It causes other problems. Was it injected by penicillin? Why did the animal die? So I think the rule of mortality, it has to get disposed of.
Andrew
0:23:21
Yeah.
Johan
0:23:22
So yeah, Andrew, cool.
Johan
0:23:23
I thought that would be a really interesting topic. I think you brought it up, but I do agree with you. Is there anything else you sort of wanted to mention on that? I wanted to bring up, but I don't know how much time I've got left, but on South Africa, you guys have interesting stuff going on in your agricultural sector at the moment? Power cuts is a big one. How are the farmers and all pig farmers getting around? What are you guys doing on an eight-hour-a-day sort of power cuts?
Andrew
0:23:47
I mean, right now it's down. We're having about two hours off twice a day, but a few months ago, I mean, it was up to 12 hours on, 12 hours off, you know, divided into every four hours. So four hours on, four hours off. We get a nice schedule, so you know when it's happening, but half of it still goes off. So it's put a lot of strain on the system. I mean, I think South African agriculture is very successful and we export a lot out of South Africa and there's nice expansions and there's great opportunities, but there are also a lot of problems in the industry. You mentioned power. Power is a big problem. We've had a lot of issues with grain prices since the Ukraine-Russia war broke out. That's obviously because the global problem impacted on us a lot. We are a market that imports and exports, so we're very... The South African market is... Price is highly affected by the Chicago price. So you know, we're part of the world.
Andrew
0:24:43
We're not cut off. Power has been an issue just by driving costs. I think, you know, humans, and especially farmers, are tough and get sweat up to. We have a problem, make a plan, fix it. So it's a diesel generator initially and then diesel gets more and more expensive and then the power is less and less and less, so you're using more. And eventually, it's a move over to solar. And we've got, I think the one good thing about South Africa's power problem is it's
forced people to go green. So the amount of solar panels going up across all over East Africa, residential and farming areas, it's surprising.
They're all over the place and soon I don't think we're going to need much from the grid because people are making alternative plans. So in a way it's good, but it comes with a cost and that cost at the end of the day has to be covered by the consumer, but the consumer also doesn't have endless money and we don't have many consumers that can afford protein. So it puts pressure on and it means the margins of the farms are cut down to the bare minimum. And yeah, like last year, we probably lost 8% or 10% of our big farmers in South Africa
because of the economy. And we're hoping that this year is going to be better, but it's been a tough few years and I think things like load shilling, power cuts make it that much worse. Yeah, we might take our mind out of that.
Johan
0:26:01
It's kind of like don't whine, make a plan.
Andrew
0:26:03
Absolutely, and I think, I mean, look around us when we're driving here, Johan, it's the resilience of the human always surprises me, or of any animal, and we're just another one of the animals on the planet. But, you know, there's always a plan to be made, and one can sit back and whinge about it, or one can get on and make a plan And, you know, us farmers make me proud. We farm under very challenging circumstances, whether it's this year's El Nino and it's not rainy and it's dry and the guys are watching their crops dry up or whether it's African politics being as unstable as it is. And you've got all these challenges, but here we are and living good lives and making it work and really excited about the next development tomorrow. You know, what's around the corner and looking for the next thing.
Johan
0:26:51
I think so. I think Africa is exciting. I mean it definitely has challenges and I know it has different challenges but you know what it's a growing population, people need to eat, there's a lot of open space, there's a lot of land if you learn how to navigate the systems and that's the biggest thing for me was you know we went through some pretty tough years here and we went through a phase where a lot of guys would be negative, a lot of guys would be whinging and whining and upset and grumpy and my comment to that is no one is forcing you to be here. You've got to be positive; you've got to focus on the future, you can't hold on to the past, you've got to constantly be moving forward. You can learn from the past but don't hold on to it.
Andrew
0:27:22
Yeah, and I guess it's easy to say, but some people are in rough situations and some people couldn't leave if they wanted to and then some people are still in those.
Johan
0:27:32
That's true.
Andrew
0:27:33
We are generalizing, but in general, yeah, we had this army because I like it.
Johan
0:27:39
Yeah, yeah. It's a bit of a blast. Cool. All right, Dr. Tucker, thank you very much for the commentary and sharing your family's history about the pigs and the vultures. I thought that was a really cool angle. And yeah, appreciate you doing the podcast with me.
Andrew
0:27:55
100%. 100%, Go well.
Transcribed with Cockatoo
