Swine

By: Hal Schmidt Farming is a business, and part of any business is analyzing when and if you should expand your operation.  This is a question that is constantly circling in the back of farmers minds – to buy that piece of land or not, to expand your herd or...

By: Marty Rost The average person won’t think twice about what lies beneath a hog barn, but anyone in agriculture see’s dollar signs.  As we all know, manure is a valuable fertilizer for crops.  In fact, many hog producers got into the business for that very reason – to save...

Delivering and drying off new born piglets is the best part about working with pigs. However, the work of getting piglets off to a good start starts long before the day they are born. In fact, it starts 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days before their birth. The day...

By: Casey Neill This past month, Pipestone Grow Finish held a Nutrition conference.  Several nutritionists  including Dr. Joel DeRouchey from Kansas State University, Dr. John Patience from Iowa State Universtiy, Dr. James Usry from Mironutrients, and Dr. Charles Stark from Kansas State University Department of Grain Science  presented.  Grow Finish...

For a northwest Iowa pork producer, an investment in the Pipestone provided an opportunity for his operation to sustainably grow today, and presents a roadmap for the next generation to get started in livestock production. Mike Ver Steeg is a third generation Iowa farmer, and the second generation to raise...

On this exceptionally frigid morning my truck thermometer is reading -18°F.  Yes, that is a negative sign in front of the 18. Lucky for me, most pigs in Iowa are raised indoors. After a cold trip from my truck to the building I am in a toasty barn set to...

The pig of the week this week is 17 days old. She and her siblings will be moving soon from the crate they call home to a new barn with other piglets their age - sort of like Kindergarten Graduation!

Helpful vocabulary Weaning: When piglets switch from being with their mother and drinking her milk to being on their own on a diet of solid food. Sow Farm: The farm where piglets are born and where the sows (moms) live. In my last post The Birthing Process, I gave all...

By: Dr. Bryan Myers Its one on the toughest phone calls a pork producer can receive —a call that your hog barn is on fire.  Unfortunately, this is a tragedy I had to experience this year.  More often than not, barn fires result in extensive loss of both property and animals.  I cannot stress...

By: Jamie Smith Consumers want more information than ever.  They want to know where their meat came from, how the animal was raised, and everything in between.  Thus – the ever complicated world of farm audits was born, creating a series of hoops for producers to jump through.   You may...