Producer to Producer: Indiana farm manager shares real life perspective from the barn

Mar 17, 2025

Tim Burnside, swine farm manager at I & S Furrer Farms in Wolcott, Indiana, spoke at the Four Star Veterinary Service Pork Industry Conference in Muncie, Indiana, to share his experience as a swine farm manager. After his presentation, he spoke with The Pig Site's Sarah Mikesell about his on-farm experiences.

Tell us about I & S Furrer Farms.
We have about 1,800 sows and are a farrow-to-finish operation with three finishing facilities. At any given time, we have 24,000 to 25,000 animals on feed.

I oversee farm management and leave the physical work to his team. One of my responsibilities is lining up the pig marketing, which can be challenging.

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You have to make appointments to send market animals anymore, and we sell five days a week, but sometimes six or seven loads a week, and wean about 1,100 pigs every week. I’d really like finishing space for about 2,000 more pigs. I keep the facilities really full, so we need at least two more weeks’ worth of finishing space.

We are a closed herd and raise our own breeding stock on the farm. I really like that concept, and I think it’s helped our productivity quite a bit.

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Video: Managing Severe PRRS Outbreaks - Dr. Claire Mtezankuni

In this episode of The Swine it Podcast Show Canada, Dr. Claire Mtezankuni, Swine Veterinarian at Carthage Veterinary Service, discusses the growing severity of PRRS outbreaks in sow farms. She explains how respiratory disease and sow mortality are changing outbreak response, why necropsies and bacterial cultures can guide treatment, and how vaccination, biosecurity, pain management, and clear team communication support recovery and elimination. Listen now on all major platforms!

“Emerging PRRS strains can produce severe reproductive and respiratory disease simultaneously, creating substantial health challenges across sow farms during acute outbreaks.”

Meet the guest: Dr. Claire Mtezankuni / claire-mtezankuni-2529b1b3 is a Swine Veterinarian at Carthage Veterinary Service in Illinois, where her work includes commercial farm veterinary leadership, herd health, disease elimination, and veterinary internship coordination. She holds a DVM from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a Master of Veterinary Science in Livestock Systems Health from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Learn more from Dr. Claire Mtezankuni on The Swine it Podcast Show Canada, available on all major platforms.