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<blockquote data-quote="Brandonm2" data-source="post: 309006" data-attributes="member: 2095"><p>I used too work for a large corporate hog producer. They had built the company on 1000 sow farms. Just before I came on board the new farms became 2400 sow farms. It does not sound like much of a difference but having been intimately involved in both sizes there is really no comparison. Simple jobs like selling pigs or washing a farrowing house could become incredibly difficult to get done even with the 2 or 3 more people. I know I went to some farms that had stopped treating gestation barns altogether and keeping the death losses amoung the piglets below 9% was most taxing. If you took your time, and went through the boar barn, heat check barn, both gestations, and the gilt barn with a treatment tray and checking for heats you could lose three or four hours EASILY and anybody who did it in less than 2 hours usually did such a sloppy job that you might as well not have bothered. Most of those large farms IF YOU spot checked their numbers behind them closely were really running around 11-12% death loss of the pigs. Murphy Brothers was building 3400 sow farms then and had a 5000 sow and a 6800 sow (twin 3400 sow units managed as the same farm). I would imagine feedlots are pretty much the same. At some point in size, managers become engulfed by their mountain of paperwork and not enough managing of the personnel takes place.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Brandonm2, post: 309006, member: 2095"] I used too work for a large corporate hog producer. They had built the company on 1000 sow farms. Just before I came on board the new farms became 2400 sow farms. It does not sound like much of a difference but having been intimately involved in both sizes there is really no comparison. Simple jobs like selling pigs or washing a farrowing house could become incredibly difficult to get done even with the 2 or 3 more people. I know I went to some farms that had stopped treating gestation barns altogether and keeping the death losses amoung the piglets below 9% was most taxing. If you took your time, and went through the boar barn, heat check barn, both gestations, and the gilt barn with a treatment tray and checking for heats you could lose three or four hours EASILY and anybody who did it in less than 2 hours usually did such a sloppy job that you might as well not have bothered. Most of those large farms IF YOU spot checked their numbers behind them closely were really running around 11-12% death loss of the pigs. Murphy Brothers was building 3400 sow farms then and had a 5000 sow and a 6800 sow (twin 3400 sow units managed as the same farm). I would imagine feedlots are pretty much the same. At some point in size, managers become engulfed by their mountain of paperwork and not enough managing of the personnel takes place. [/QUOTE]
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