It's time for a new era of communication the swine industry one that you can get the latest updates while Community or driving to Farms here. You have the brightest mind of the global swine industry in your pocket. What are we going to do? How are we going to get there? And that needs to be an ongoing activity and oftentimes the pig industry were really busy taking care of pigs, but we're reading sometimes not very good at business planning and development. And frankly, I find it people's Financial understanding of the business is pretty weak. Welcome to sign a podcast. My name is Martha Rose Salvage your host for today's episode. This episode is brought to you by just all celebrating its 25th anniversary. Just all manufacturers the original Wireless Standalone swine feeding system designed by pork producers for pork producers their simple reliable and provide peace of mind 24/7. And 365 days a year just all is not just manufactured by an equipment company, but by a family bought production business with as lat level understanding just always one step ahead of strike fitting. Hello, everyone. This is Marci Gonzales. And today we have a new episode for this fine it podcast the the topic for today will be key aspects for successful Pig production. And we have dr. Steve Coleman legend of the swine industry with several decades of experience through through large corporations, and now in high school Salton Sea so with that, dr. Pullman, thanks a lot for joining us today and And I guess if you'd like to start with a you know, how did you get involved in pig production and then walk us through your your career? Are you good firms? Thanks for the invitation. And it's a pleasure to be able to participate often tell people. I got in pig production because my brother was a fast runner and he actually got a greased pig in a rodeo and that little guilt became our first because we just didn't want to kill her and and so time I graduate from high school. I had a net that they project about 40,000. So selling weed pigs feed their pigs and we also had a custom breeding service. We bought the borders and those boers were transported around the neighborhood to service the neighbor's house so stuff to pay to we would take this really crazy, but it seemed to work for us and from there was continue to be intrigued with the swine industry went to Utah State the degree and Science and met a professor from the University of Nebraska. Dr. Murray Danielson who offered me an assistantship to come to Nebraska and I was very much life-changing for me. So after finishing my degree at University of Nebraska, I accepted a position in extension and research at Kansas City, which was an absolutely wonderful experience at that time, Kansas. The state was considered a cattle school and had no involvement in pig production. And so we really started the whole momentum of this wine reputation that appeared and they exist today. And so one of the things we'll spend to see is that programmed up over time and after about five six years. I had an offer to move into the feed industry and spent years in the feed industry doing product development and research And after doing that for a period of time it was thought about a career change and moved into production management was involved in the growth of the circle for Farm business in southwest Utah. We move that business from about 20,000 sows 275 thousand thousand men for men with Smithfield Foods moved to Iowa where I became the president of the western operations for Smithfield Foods. So Ben Great experience the time the Chinese purchase Smithfield Foods. I took early retirement and the last few years. I've been spending time with family doing travel and also stay in touch with the pig industry have a Consulting business that work with some production management companies as well as companies doing some product development just enough to keep money. So my wife can buy new shoes. So let's review how I got involved with big Industries. In a great opportunity and one of the areas that I've really noticed the past few years as I've started to learn from the experiences of and Smithfield and you go out and start to work with other clients. There's just some key components of best practices that just need to be more effectively implemented. That's amazing. What an impressive career. They are Dr. Pullman and Yeah, it's good to remind that you are right there in the early stages of the swine group their case state, so that that's great. Well, so I guess that's a good link for for the next question there Steve. So what are the key factors for successful Pig production in your experience? Well, and what I'd like to do is just maybe share with you two or three key points, you know after we both is really improving productivity and that's such critical part. But what I do today is maybe share with the Ottomans some critical factors of successful business. And the first one in my mind is very very commonly overlooked is people don't know their mission or value statements. So that's the first one just make sure they know who they are and money trying to do and who are they trying to serve and they establish those core principles? And then secondly, they've got to develop a living breathing strategic plan. You know, what are we going to do? How we going to get there and that needs to be an ongoing activity and oftentimes the pig industry were really busy taking care of pigs, but we're reading sometimes not very good business planning and development and frankly. I find it people's Financial understanding of the business is pretty weak. And they assume that improved productivity means more profit and that's a bit of a challenge and oftentimes what we find happening is there's lots of information not real clear of which are the key metrics that drive performance. And so what I've tried to do the last few years is to simplify the business to say here are the three or four real key. Metrics that drive the business and everything else is secondary to the an example of that would be percent livability post weaning and then another one would be the number of pigs weaned for self are old now notice. I have it but Psy or pigs per cell per year in that top one because the numbers had a very good indicator of the success of the business. And then look at what is the amount of pork produced per cell per year as a total system metric? That's the true indication of the throughput of the business and to do that benchmarking is a critical component of it and benchmarking to me is a really important aspect to say, where are we how do we stand and how do we move to the next level? Because part of that vision and strategic plan is to say I want to be lets say in the top 10% of the industrial indeed key metrics and you first identify what metric you're going to use and what's benchmarking Services best for your application and then probably the last element that I would put on that list for success is you've got to have successful. I'm going to call it a human capital development initiative. What are you doing to help your people get? Better and at all levels in the organization people need to continue to say, how are we going to get better and some of that is with Coatings conflict resolution and through understanding of the financial ramifications of the business. It's how you track and monitor the key metrics. Very nice. Now. This is a yeah, I mean as you travel around the globe and and I've traveled around the globe talking producers first thing that a lot of people bring up is bring up is speaks for supper year, right and it's impressive to me like how long people take to change this Matrix, right? It's so ingrained that we've been talking a lot about, you know, even carcass Carcass feed conversion or caloric efficiency and all that kind of thing and it's still not the status quo, right? It's still not the the mainstream you there's no mainstream usage of that as my impression. I don't know what you think Dr. Pullman. Absolutely. And you know, if you were looking at TD business indicators Psy is not in the top five, right? You know, it's a it's a critical number and is often used. Used for comparison purposes but you know, there's just a number that is often. It is associated with bragging rights and often used for comparison purposes, but it's not a very good one, right? And so I think our industry needs to gravitate toward that we make great strides in South productivity. But at the same time we've seen now some casualties associated with increase our mortality. Improve increasing amount of finishing mortality and the number percent of full value pigs seems to be struggling to so, you know, even though we move the needle on Psy some of the more important system indicators of not made that equal progress that makes total sense when the grill since we're creating more waste, right? interesting Okay, and one thing that you mention is it's touched on cost and profit. I guess one thing that that I'd like to ask you is. How do you see or how should the system's manage their focus on profit versus cost and I guess that will change if you're in a in a good scenario versus a bad economic scenario. So what's your overall thoughts their doctor poem Oh, yeah, and I think True extent you have to watch both. Now you do have some systems that will totally focus on cost because that's something that is control and the biggest components prop oftentimes are those non controllable cost like the cost of feed ingredients the cost are the value in which you sell pigs at. So by having a total focus on the cost of production you get people focused. C mon things that they can control which is a good strategy from a management standpoint, but often what happens is one has to make sure that the prophet is coming along with as well as the cost control and another good example of that. I think illustrate that point we often talk about sport loss as a pretty important indicator and that's not nearly as critical. As trying to make sure that we get Mark weights up and we're accomplishing our Market will be Target with greater uniformity of that market weight and sieve because oftentimes when you're minimizing sort logs, we tend to sell a lighter Pig and carcass weight is one of those key Five drivers that one needs to continue to monitor carcass weight interesting that yeah. I mean heavy heavy Peaks. It has been a big Trend over the last 50 years, I guess right I do see that continue to grow. What's your take on Market way Marshall wait for sure has continued to increase every year for the past three decades and there's there's no change in fact, and you know, the the pig is now demonstrate the ability to continue to lay down lean pretty efficient to really The weights and so, you know, I think our industry will continue to kill heavy pigs particularly with the deboning capabilities and sectioning primals that they're doing. It just makes it more important and so from a total system optimization standpoint, it's good for production. It's good for processing have a heavier pick now disadvantage of the heavier pig to sometimes will start to affect eating quality if not closely watched. Interesting interesting, I think University of Illinois that has been working on some of that of recently their own meat quality of very heavy pigs. So interesting area to watch another question be as we had 30 on the market weight and carcass weight Steve. What are your thoughts on the, you know marketing on a fixed weight versus fixed time basis, of course going to change. All the year as big school girl, you know faster or slower but also from a strategic standpoint how should a system work through that as far as trying to expand number of farms, you know to have that that fixed rate or it's going to depend on scenarios. What's your thoughts on there? Yes, it's a good question. And it's a question is plugged the industry for a lot of years and I've been on both sides of that. Russian but what I found over time a fixed Philo system is a more predictable system and where you have enough days and then you do what you can to increase gain now at the same time and it will see the concept of space balance as I work with producers and historically looking at some of the major constraints in our business. The balance of the amount of finishing space. We have relative to the changing of our salvations space becomes pretty Paramount. And the thing that has been evident in financial assistance of those never can afford to be space short. And so we see there's probably four or five months of the year. The carcass weights will drop maybe 4 to 7. And part of that is just because the way we're managing Pig flow and Direction and we get Space short and so often go back and we look at what is the ratio of the number of spaces? We have relative to cell operation and we saw productivity increasing on an annual rate with Market weights increasing less use of ractopamine in some of those components. Always affect the optimum space and you know, if a person ought to be looking at digital space about every two to three years because their system capacity has grown and finishing space may be a restriction. So from my standpoint, I would for sure continue to push a fixed final system where I'd lock in in a wiener finish. This is the number of days and I make sure I got the pigs that Move through that system throughout the entire year not just three of the seasons, but I want to be able to continue to hit my 290-pound pig during summer months makes sense. Try to keep it as predictable as possible. And what happens is that South Wing weekly pick throughput changes quite dramatic, but we're pushing those into a fixed growing system. And so some week for overpopulating other weeks rendered populating and then scratch your head and say why do we have challenges with uniform Market weights coming out? Seasonality on the reproduction side as well as just the seasonality of diseases as well. Maybe yeah, and then what happens to is then we start looking at flow strategies, you know and looking at those and evaluate him over time the best single system that I've seen is when we have La Salle Farms you single Source into a ween finished barn and you do At within a week and when one can do that, then the Harvest process is much more consistent and Returns on the cost of that space is greater and then you not, you know, three to five grades out of the barn. He sometimes will take your first grade and do a run out and then you got the uniformity throughput because you have uniform pigs coming in coming in out of sheer. Probably another bias with you. You is I believe today that we in North America is still too good. I think the Europeans are too old and the right sweet spot is 23 and 25 days of age. And so if I take that twenty three to twenty five day old Pig and move it into a ween defending system and I'm doing that single source with short Fields. It changes the Dynamics and the cost of the profit there you might need More space that you could never afford be space shorts. Yeah, that's probably the closest thing to a bulletproof. Those pigs is what you just said, I think right 23 to 24 days old and single source and feeling in a week, that's well, you know, the the other thing that I would encourage people to look at is to really assess what is their space balance how Any spaces be to finish basis do they have for sale and it want to look at that real critical and do that math. And you start making some assumptions on what is the stocking density going to be you need about 11 to hat spaces per sow to have reasonable balance, assuming that you're getting decent daily gains. We need to finish and a lot of people don't know what that number is and over time. There's going to continue to drift up as Market weights increase and South productivity continues to increase right? I don't think I ever thought about that number and and I think a lot of systems experienced in the last 10 or 15 years that the for those that have nursery and finishing the weight at the end of the nursery is lower today than 10 years ago. And and that's probably a part of it as well. On top of the birth weight reduction. Yeah, I think that's true. Very nice. Very good, Dr. Pullman. I guess my other question I have to you is your general thoughts on Sal lifetime productivity and in what should we watch for their? Yeah, another really interesting area and you know as we started working on Lifetime productivity, it's probably been 10 years ago. Now the message is stayed is Saying that satellite time for activity is a better indicator of South performance than PSY and what you really are seeing today is that number captures guilt pull efficiency and days from selection to the time of breeding and how that's monitored. And so lifetime productivity is particularly critical is As an indicator and done correlation work to show that frankly PSY and lifetime productivity only have an R square of about 0.25. So about 25 percent of the variation in Psy can be sell lifetime performance can be explained by PSY. So you got 75% that something else. And so not a lot the biggest opportunity frankly to move lifetime productivity is how do you get gilts managed and retained in the herd and increase the longevity of the female and so selection our replacement rates of God come down and number of parity per average. Sal is got to continue to move up to really get the value of Lifetime Performance Shop. And see at one point we're looking at probably 30 35 things for Lifetime today. That number is probably more closely protein 4405. And again that number people are not really well connected with because it's not readily available to them in the record-keeping systems. Right? That is that that makes sense. And the other thing I think we should probably touch on this is just the just individual care of the South as well. Right making sure we're walking depends every day, especially as we move that through the through the Now the conversion to pans and all that. Yes, that's absolutely right and frankly, the bigger than South Armagh partner is the condom and you know in the day we have to 500 South a farm was a little easier to detect those problems, you know, you were able to see what Sal was starting to have deep leg albums or what ones were not consuming their fee and those that needed to get up. But now I'm day with a bigger cell Farms, you know, the staff really need to be trained to make sure that they're closely scrutinizing the health status during gestation and particularly preparing makes sense. You know, he was just looking at some numbers today looking at South mortality increases and we've all seen projects at Iowa State. I've been involved with through the Port board, but it's amazing today that in that day of said there were In 10 to 12 percent average mortality with ranges of four to twenty percent mortality and Sal's on an annual basis and you just think about that extreme variation and how that number continues to go up the South's telling us something she's telling us that she is not adapting to our production expectations, and we just need to intensify the way we monitor sows. Right it now completely agree with you that definitely listen to the pig right always the always going to find the answer that way. Yeah, and at the same time you've got to have Dynamic metrics and soon as terms and then look at them and have one of my favorite topics is to have people create visuals that are in the 10 second format if you If see it 10 seconds, you're not going to see it. I mean the big reports we get on Val Farms today people struggle to see where the big rocks are interesting almost almost something like those scorecards type of reports. Yeah, you got to put it into like a statistical process control chart or run table or you've got to be able to see it fast and not look at 15 pages of numbers and then you're looking at the list and then going to us and saying, you know, this is what happened the last six weeks. You really want to continually ask yourself are my key metrics getting better staying the same or getting worse and eyeballing a bunch of numbers on a table. Don't get you that Trend Direction. I love it. No, this is great advice. I hope I hope More Farms simplify that that those reports very nice. Well anything else in general Dr. Pullman before we move to the three questions, we ask every guest. Well, you know again one of my pet projects is to Ask management teams to say what are you doing to help your people be more successful. How are you helping them and value to their life. And what are you doing to help them greater job satisfaction. I'll often we're long on pigment ship and short on leadership. So what I guess from the answers, you've got so far. What do you think or what? What would the best systems be doing you think on that Arena? the ones that have standard onboarding processes and training and then they also have programs in place for all levels of their team to get better and that they're not afraid to take three five percent of their employees time for improvement activities, you know where they're teaching them about science or teaching them about personal planning or or any are reinforcing strategic plan or the financial ramifications of the business, but got to take time to help people learn and sharpen their saw makes total sense. And yeah, that's that's great. I think I hope all some from the audience can take that and run with it and Implement. That's great. The truth is precision flying. Love the future. It is the present every pig is the intelligent Pig Health platform. It is a simple yet powerful Pig health and production management to request a free 20 minutes demonstration at www.davidpakman.com Co it is time to our famous doctor problem. So the three questions we ask every gas. The first one is What is your favorites wine-related book my favorites wine-related book. Yes interesting idea. I guess I really don't have one per se I it's been interesting though. And I must admit I've really appreciated the way our publication to become more science oriented like for instance. You take National Harper. Today they report on Research results and not sharing a bunch of testimonials. It's really become more research progress. And so thankfully the point I really enjoy reading those in the past. I look at those days just about to advertise meant Bunch propaganda bunch of testimony without Auto science-based. But today it's becoming a very good then you for delivering information out to the public. So I have to say I enjoy reading Port magazine. That's cool that makes total sense and it's more current than just a the scientific journals because those are so slow and right, you know, I want to read the abstract and then look at the table and see if I'm interested in Reading More right? You're probably right after goes into the website and magazines. It's going to take about six months and seriously the actual paper, right, right? Okay. How about the book? Your favorite book that is not related to pigs. Well, I have the personal books that I rely on a lot. I really have learned a lot from the Stephen Covey series. I'd say he's probably my favorite business writer and I would probably put that one on the top of the list for if somebody hasn't read 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It is a good read and there's some very fundamental lessons in life. Life that can be applied to that and it has direct relevance to pick production. It's all about developing yourself helping others. Great great book does he does he has some other books? I'm not familiar with the other ones besides that one. Yeah, he's got four or five, you know, first things first, you know, and then he has some about even how to help your family get better. Very nice. Very cool. Well the last question is Steve what sets apart successful sign professionals from those who are not, you know, I thought about that question about you over the years and I think it was down to kind of two things one is the pace of execution and you say what you're going to do and you do it and then your ability to make sure you maintain balance in your life. And you know, it's so easy to have people say I'll do that all do that and then they don't do it and they're not fulfilling the commitment they made to their colleague or their friends or their family and at the same time. It's easy to be so busy that you really don't keep all the things in lock in a perspective that makes I love that because that sense I think a lot about as well the the If in my case if I don't write down it's not going to happen. Like if that thing of I'm going to remember about it or there's like ten things. I need to remember. I hate. I know I need to write down. I love that just from execution standpoint, right? Yeah. In fact, they're so critical and it absolutely has made over the years people that don't fulfill commitments. Very nice. Well, I guess we We come to the end of the show here. Dr. Palmer really appreciate your insights and those several decades of experience trying to boil that down in 30 minutes. So we really really appreciate your time my pleasure and it is really several. It's just for good to talk to you. It's just for this wonderful service God. Thank you. I appreciate that. We stay in touch doctor. Palma
Today’s episode will cover key aspects for successful pig production. “[To be successful, we need to know] what are we going to do, how are we going to get there, and that needs to be an ongoing activity… and often times, in the pig industry we are really busy taking care of pigs but we really sometimes are not very good at business planning and development.” – Dr. Steve Pollmann. Our guest is Dr. Steve Pollmann, one of the bright minds of the Global Swine Industry. Dr. Pollman has worked in academia doing research, teaching and extension. Additionally, he worked in the feed industry on product development, technical services, quality control programs, diet formulation, and customer support in all livestock species. After that, he became the Director of Operations for Murphy-Brown and a few years later the President of the Western Operations, a subsidiary of Smithfield Foods. Retired in 2014 and since he wanted to maintain some involvement in the industry, he started DSP Consulting working with several clients with product development needs, pork production support, and team building. What you will learn:  - The key factors for successful pig production; - The use of benchmark to get better; - Metrics that we should we look for on a consistent basis; - Managing for profit vs. managing for cost; - Thoughts on managing the system for fixed weight vs. fixed time; - Current thoughts on sow lifetime productivity; - What sets apart successful professionals from those who are not. Steve’s favorite swine-related resource: National Hog Farmer (site) Steve’s favorite book unrelated to swine: Seven Habits of Highly Effective People  Edited by Lauro Faccin 