July 25, 2008

 

Manitoba weanling pigs spared despite industry turmoil

 

 

Despite speculation that hundreds of thousands of Manitoba weanling pigs would be euthanized during the spring and summer due to a crisis in the hog industry, an official with Manitoba Pork Council said relatively few piglets have been put down.

  

The speculation had been triggered by reports in the early spring that US buyers were cancelling their contracts to purchase weanlings from Manitoba producers. Buyers said they were concerned they would no longer be able to sell finished Canadian pigs to US processing plants ahead of the implementation of country-of-origin-labelling in the US

  

The news was particularly disturbing for Manitoba producers, who sell more weanling pigs into the US than any Canadian province - up to 80,000 a week.

  

In the past months, small batches were euthanized, but the amount was far below some of the original forecasts that had been bandied about, including estimates of 25,000 per week.

  

There are a number of reasons why producers changed their minds, said Andrew Dickson, general manager of the Manitoba Pork Council, or MPC, in Winnipeg. In the end, some farmers were able to find homes for their weanlings despite receiving only minimal payment for them.

  

Other producers were dissuaded by the costs involved with the euthanizing and safe disposal of the animals.

  

There had been calls in the spring from the Manitoba hog industry asking the provincial government to fund a weanling cull program similar to the breeding swine cull program funded by the federal government and offered by the Canadian Pork Council.

  

Such a program was never set up however, leaving producers to bear the brunt of the cull costs.

  

"A lot of (producers) thought that if they were only going to be getting $5.00 per animal that they might as well euthanize them, but then they started looking into the whole thing, in terms of cost of disposal and so on, and it made sense to take the $5.00 and ship the pigs," Dickson said.

  

A degree of cautious optimism among farmers about future hog prices and feed costs also likely changed some producers' minds.

  

"For January delivery to Maple Leaf's s Brandon plant you're looking at C$140.00 to $150.00 per pig. That compares to the spring when you maybe would have gotten $100.00 to $110.00. There has been about $30.00 added to the value of an animal in the last three months," Dickson said.

  

US corn prices have fallen back from recent record highs while feed supplies in general are expected to be more abundant, he added.

  

"If you look forward to the June futures price and you take into consideration how much feed costs have come down, we should be able to see a decent price for the weanlings by November or December," said Dale McBurney, a weanling producer from the Souris, Manitoba area.

  

In the meantime, however, times are tough and McBurney continues to sell weanlings for $5.00 a head delivered into the US. The average cost of production roughly totals $37 per animal.