Meet our Pig Farming Experts

Happy National Ag week!  It's nice to see all of my farmer friends taking the time to talk about how much they love agriculture with their friends.  People really seem to be into it this year, and a lot of stories are being shared.

(Ag story: wait until it's a bit drier to get in the field.)

This week on our farm we had one of our consultant's visit.  His name is Al, and he has spent is whole working life in the pork industry.  He comes through our farm about once a month, often with our other consultant Dale, and they look at all of our pigs, making suggestions on everything from feeding to handling to maintenance.  Al works closely with our vet, and with the people that sell us breeding stock in order to help us make the best decisions for the farm.  Dale really takes interest in pig structure and genetics, and helps us select the right animals for our system.  These two consultants have practical experience and industry connections, helping us to solve any problems we may have.  They also give us valuable outside information.  Sometimes you can look at things every day, but not actually see the problem.  Dale and Al keep us in check.

In addition to our consultants, we work with two vets.  One vet is a local large animal vet, and he visits each of our farrowing farms (where the piglets and mamas are) once a month to do a general health check-up.  He works closely with our other vet, who is a swine vet.  The swine vet doesn't make it out to the farm as often, but he is only a phone call away for any help that we need.  Our local vet takes care of us in emergencies, and helps us with diagnostics on a regular basis.  We are lucky to have two vets that can work so closely together and help our farm.

Besides these visits, our management team meets once a month in order to discuss all of the information that the consultants and vets give us.  This helps hold the whole team accountable on the changes we have decided to make, as well as make sure that we are all on the same page.  We also chat on a daily basis to make sure we are accomplishing the things we intended.  There are still things we miss, but working together makes a difference.

Keeping the communication flowing from top to bottom is one of the harder jobs on the farm.  Even a small change has 10 people working on it, and easily 10 another people having to implement it.  No one person on the farm is an expert on everything, nor should they be.  Farmer's generally don't make changes to their farming practices without talking to an expert.  We don't want to do anything that will harm the animals, the land, or the farm family.  Not every decision is the right one; not every change is positive, but we move forward with the information we have and keep trying to improve.  That is a huge part of any farm story.