RED DEER – The rising cost of feed ingredients makes a feed budget a practical tool for hog operations.
Mark Chambers of Sunterra Farms, which uses the practice to monitor costs and trends, told a swine technology workshop in Red Deer Oct. 22 that a feed budget pinpoints expenses, losses and profits.
He said variable ingredient prices have forced Sunterra to change rations almost monthly.
“It may not be the right thing for the growth of the pig, but when you are looking at costs per kilo of gain, it turns out we are trying to feed the pig for the lowest cost per kilo that we can.”
Read Also
VIDEO: How to check your feed mixer’s efficiency
Dwayne Summach, livestock and feed extension specialist with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, showed visitors at Ag in Motion 2025 how to use the Penn State Particle Size Separator to check the efficiency and performance of your total mixed ration feed mixers.
He said few producers know their weekly feed costs, and a budget would help them assess feed costs per head as well as the entire herd.
By working with a nutritionist or veterinarian, producers can custom build budgets, feed orders and rations around expected growth rates.
He also said a feed budget helps producers plan when to move pigs to the next phase of growth from the nursery to the grower barn to the finishing barn.
By including all farm facts, he added, the budget can help deliver the correct rations to the right group of pigs to avoid under or overfeeding.
“We want to get the right feed delivered to the right pigs at the right time,” Chambers said.
“If we can follow the feed budget we can keep dollars in the bank.”
The budget can also include expenses, profits, weights of pigs, weekly gains and feed conversion ratios to determine how much feed was used. It can take into account the number of culls and those that died.
The budget can also plot weekly or monthly activities to watch for trends.
“Timely feedback is critical so make sure it gets out.”
The cost of not following the budget is high.
Chambers said a farm raising 48,000 pigs a year that doesn’t follow a budget could spend $57,000 a year needlessly by buying a slightly more expensive ingredient.
“If you get it wrong, you give away too much money.”
