Carter's High Health Pig Herd

Oamaru pig breeder and finisher Ian Carter – talks about pig farming and the challenges facing the industry.

Ian’s involvement in the pig industry goes back over 20 years. He spent 15 years in the Auckland area working with a company called PIC which is the largest pig breeding company in NZ. He later moved to Green and McCahill contractors. This business included a 550 sow piggery. While he was there Ian was involved in two dairy farm conversions. Ian was appointed Chairman of NZPork (The New Zealand Pork Industry) in 2011.

Ian purchased his 146 ha property south of Oamaru in 2003. The move was a break away from the fast track in Auckland and a desire to work for himself.

The property he bought included a 190 sow intensive piggery. The piggery is a farrow-to-finish indoor operation which supplies Fresh Pork in Timaru and there is also a separate beef cattle operation. This year he’s expanded with a further 126 hectares.

The piggery produces around 390t of meat annually. Ian says they depopulated the herd in 2011/12 and after an extensive internal rebuild of the piggery, repopulated with a high health status herd in March 2012. The idea was to start afresh with a brand new herd clean of any disease which might slow down reproduction and growth. As a consequence the piggery is “closed”. No animals are brought in. Breeding is done via AI. Ian’s pigs have no contact with any others outside his herd.

It also means no stock agents, vets, suppliers or journalists can come into the piggery complex without first checking in with Ian. If anyone has had any contact with other pigs in the previous days they’re basically not welcome.

Nowadays the breeding herd has 3 weekly batch farrowing. The sows are weaned into stalls for mating and mixed in groups at around 3 days post mating.

Sows are moved to farrowing rooms around 7 days prior to giving birth. There are 6 rooms with 8 crates per room.The target is 24 sows to farrow with 310 piglets born. They wean at 28 days of age.

The weaners are housed in straw based pens. There are 8 pens with around 85 piglets to the pen. At ten weeks they’re moved to plastic floored pens and sized into groups of 15.

They’re moved again at 14 weeks of age into the grower/finisher shed and the feed regime is changed to a computerised regime..

Ian says they sell around 90 baconers per week at an average liveweight of 106kg which equates to 84kg carcase weight.

Some of the growth rates he is achieving would make the very best of lamb and beef finishers jealous.

According to Ian the industry has moved on from the bad image of a few years ago. Farmers have adopted the welfare standards and are continuing to be keen to respond to their consumers.

Ian says there needs to be a balance of both indoor and outdoor production systems in New Zealand to reflect the balance of consumers. “They know that the product has come from a free range sow and there are a number of different brands that are now more available than previously.” He says that the industry has to address the fact that consumers still have a limited amount of dollars to spend and there should be cost-competitive products available.

Ian says all the grain that is fed to the pigs is purchased locally. They buy in around 1100t of wheat and 120t of barley. The feed is milled and mixed on farm. He says there’s as many as 7 different diets. Most of the feeding system is automated. Different pens – different diets. Towards the end of the finishing regime the pigs are fed a liquid diet.

All the piggery effluent is spread on farm which minimises the need for much artificial fertilisers.

On the original block Ian runs mainly dry stock . There are 84 rising 2yr bulls and another 180 rising 1yr bulls. He also has 35 beef cows, 30 rising 2yr steers/heifers and 32 1 yr cattle.

Grass silage is stored or sold standing each year.

On the new 126 hectare block, Ian’s running dairy grazers, 200 R2 heifers and 200 rising1 heifers.

Ian’s quoted in the press as saying that the increase in imported pork coming into New Zealand, the high dollar and the effects of the recession on consumer spending have all conspired to keep the schedule flat.

Pork industry sources say about 700,000kg of imported pork enters New Zealand every week. Around 45 per cent of pork consumed in New Zealand is from imported products.

The Ministry for Primary Industries’ decision to change the laws around importing raw pig meat has caused much angst among pig farmers.

When he took over as chairman Ian said rising labour and grain and electricity costs had eroded the margins of pig farmers who were yet to see the returns other farm groups were receiving.

He says one of the challenges of his industry was that farmers were struggling to make satisfactory returns to give them confidence to invest in the industry and in the medium to long term that was something the industry had to address.

He says the High Court decision means it is likely that more people could leave the industry.

NZPork challenged the Ministry of Primary Industries’ (MPI) response to an independent review panel report on raw meat imports. This report led to the Ministry’s decision to issue new health standards for raw pork. These standards would allow raw pork to be imported from countries with a potentially fatal pig disease.

The board has spent more than $1.5 million since 2006 fighting the import standards, which it said posed an unacceptable risk to the industry.

It argued the health standards developed under the old Ministry of Agriculture would not stop the disease, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS), spreading to New Zealand pig herds. The disease does not affect humans but is the “No 1” pig disease internationally. New Zealand is one of the few countries where herds are not infected.