Pig Producer

Pig Producer Updates

• Fort Dodge Animal Health reports its Suvaxyn PCV2 vaccine is now licensed in the USA for flexible dosing and for use in pigs from 3 weeks of age, to protect them from porcine circovirus type 2. The new USDA approval allows vaccination in pigs aged 3 weeks or older in an effort to promote early pig health, either with a single 2ml dose or by using 2 doses of 1ml spaced 3 weeks apart.
• Malaysian feed additives and supplements manufacturer Sunzen Biotech has announced plans to invest 2.8% of its turnover each year on enhanced research and development of new products, after receiving approval from the Securities Commission for a stock exchange listing on the Mesdaq market of Bursa Malaysia. Local reports say the company's Orgacids feed additives will start marketing soon in China and Indonesia, being already exported to other Asian countries including Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan.
• Russian company Voronezhmyasoprom, part of Napko, has announced receiving exclusive pig production rights in Russia for DanBred pig breeding. Napko co-owner Sergey Mikhaylov says seedstock supplied by DanBred this year and in 2009 will be used to form a GGP unit for the group in Voronezh and another in Lipetskaya, which will deliver grandparent stock to the breeding sites of network of meat processing conglomerate Cherkizovo. The 2 groups together aim to produce about 20 000 parent gilts/year.
• In the USA, Land O'Lakes Purina Feed has launched True Appetizer Feed specifically for the lactating sow. Its target is to maintain or increase the sow's feed intake in lactation, particularly combating the appetite-reducing effects of hot weather when the farrowing room temperature exceeds about 26 C.
• Topigs describes delivery of 105 A-line nucleus sows and 850 Topigs-40 F1 gilts to a newly upgraded and cleaned former grow-out facility in South Africa operated by KwaZulu-Natal company Frey's Food Brand. A new multiplication agreement with Topigs South Africa enables Frey's Agriculture to produce its own Topigs-40 parent gilts for the units that supply slaughter pigs to its Freypork processing plant.
• Amlan International has been formed as a new business division of Oil-Dri Corporation of America, focused exclusively on the US$20 billion global animal health and feed nutrition market.
• Neogen Corporation in the USA has purchased formulations, manufacturing process knowledge and registration information for 14 farm animal hygiene products from DuPont Animal Health Solutions, for addition to Neogen's Animal Safety division. The products include Farm Fluid S and DuPont's BioPhene, BioQuat and Universal Barn Cleaner. The agreement was for each to be sold under the DuPont name until the transition was completed, after which Neogen would sell them under its own brands. DuPont Animal Health Solutions will continue to sell its other products and market them through current distribution channels except in North America, where disinfectant Virkon S and others will begin to be distributed through Neogen.
• Nedap Agri North America has started the first half of a 6000-sow commercial demonstration unit in Illinois, USA. The unit uses a Velos management platform for electronic sow feeding of groups of 56 sows and for automatic heat detection.
• DSM Nutritional Products has announced a 35% global price increase for its VevoVitall form of benzoic acid because of rising feed costs.
• Alltech's North America region has reported sales up some 30% this year, when announcing the appointment of 2 new area sales managers to its US sales force. The company also has noted that its director of worldwide research, Dr. Karl Dawson, has been named a 2008 Fellow of the American Society of Animal Science (ASAS) in the industry category.

How pig herd numbers are changing

Inventory reports from both sides of the Atlantic are pointing to recent reductions in the number of breeding pigs, even if there has been some easing of pressure on producers as pig prices improve and feed ingredient prices stabilize. In Europe, for example, data compiled by Eurostat from April 2008 national surveys had included an indication that sow/gilt numbers were down by 9.8% in Denmark and by 8.6% in Spain - the country that is second only to Germany for size as a European Union member state. European Market Review from AHDB Meat Services in the UK also notes that the April Spanish total of 2.53 million sows was 5% less than in December 2007. Denmark's approximately 1.3 million sows and gilts in 2008 compared with 1.44 million in April 2007.

The national herd of 1.07 million sows in the Netherlands in April this year meant a 6.6% reduction from a year earlier. Analysts also warned that a 4.8% fall in the number of pregnant and maiden gilts on Dutch units was signaling a further contraction in pig breeding inventory. From provisional counts it seems that although slaughterings in the Netherlands were up 6% in the first 6 months of 2008, a slowdown in the second half of the year looks probable.

Total sow and gilt numbers in Poland at the start of April were reported to be 20% below the level of the year before. At 1.46 million, they also represented a 10% cutback of pig breeding inventory in Poland since November 2007. Forecasts in the Polish press that up to 150 000 pig producers will quit the business during the current crisis have been compared by European Market Review with a December 2005 survey finding that the highly fragmented national pig sector contained over 580 000 units at that time, with only 46% of them having more than 100 pigs each.

Hungary has said the 12 months to April 2008 saw a 3% decrease in privately owned pig units alongside a 17% reduction of animal numbers on such enterprises. This was while the number of sows nationally was falling 9% to about 285 000.

June 2008 statistics from the US department of agriculture have shown the pig breeding population down by 0.8% to 6.07 million, even though total pigs registered a further increase of 5.8% to reach 67.66 million. USDA said American producers intended farrowing 3.07 million sows in the June-August 2008 period, down 2% from the same period in 2007. Intended farrowings for September-November 2008 were 3.05 million sows or down by 4%.