Archive Article: 2000/10/13
Dennis Bridgeford
Dennis Bridgeford farms
50ha (125 acres) at Petley
Farm in Easter Ross, north
of Inverness. The farm
comprises of a 480-sow
indoor unit producing 95kg
pigs for one outlet and 85kg
pigs for a local abattoir. A
further 320 sows are run
outdoors. Land not used for
pigs grows spring barley
AS we approach October, we are experiencing an Indian summer with some really nice hot sunny days.
Harvest on the whole went well, despite being a bit stop-start. Our spring barley did well on both yield and quality.
Baling straw was our biggest bugbear and for the first time ever, we had to row up some fields twice because of high winds and a couple of really wet days. We usually buy straw, but with a carry-over from the past two years this will be one saving we can make.
We try to buy grain that has been rejected by the maltsters for either high nitrogen or splitting. But this year has been a quiet season, with nearly all barley in the area making the specification required.
So rather than have the drier doing nothing, we bought wet wheat. The quality has been first class, with some clean samples delivered at a moisture level we can cope with.
Its not often that a bacon pig realises more that 1t of grain, but with the price being £1/kg and grain in the mid-£60s/t, this is actually happening. Lets hope it continues.
When you hear utterances from large processors that they require lower pig prices to make money, it does send ripples around the industry again. With fewer being slaughtered each week, lets hope it is hot air.
When you make alterations in a pig unit, you always fear they will make no difference at all. This was how I felt when we decided we were struggling to get the newly weaned pig off to the start required.
Wet feeding straight from weaning didnt work and straw bedding is difficult to keep clean. So I came up with the idea of a partially slatted pen, with a 5cm (2in) gap under plastic slats on a sloping floor.
Its working a treat. Pigs are only in it for 12 days before they move on to flat decks and wet feed. In this time we can really get them going on purchased creep for the first few days and then on a home-mixed creep for the rest of the period.
Its all down to excellent hygiene with no build-up of problems between batches, and importantly it cost little to convert. *
Bacon pigs, selling at £1/kg, are currently worth more than 1t of wheat each. Long may this rare trend continue, says Dennis Bridgeford.