Research: Much to gain if nursery diets match digestive capabilities.

Apr 24, 2023

Previous nursery feeding logic told us to feed nursery pigs based on their weaning weight. That heavier pigs had more advanced guts and could handle a more advanced diet. New research involving Nurture™, Cargill’s young pig program, shows weight isn’t the main factor in how we should be feeding pigs; we need to look at the digestive capabilities, and that is tied to their age.

Tremendous changes occur in a young pig’s digestive capabilities between seven and 35 days of age. “Until this point, the piglet’s immune system has relied heavily on colostrum and maternal antibodies from the sow,” according to Sabrina May, Pork Tech Application Lead, Cargill.

Click here to see more...

Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

We're a 6th generation family farm in southeast Iowa showing the real ups and downs of pig farming and row crop farming. No script, just the work. Subscribe and follow along.

JOIN THE BARN TALK NEWSLETTER AND GET LIVE EVENT ACCESS: We're on a mission to hit 10,000 subscribers, and when we do, we're hosting a live event at the barn. Sign up for exclusive access to tickets and details.