Considerations when Buying Ingredients for On-Farm Mixing

摘要

During the course of my career, I have seen some truly mind-boggling vacillations in the strategies and mechanics used when making feed for pigs in the United States. Up to and including the 1960s, there were scores of producers and a 200-sow farrow-to-finish operation was considered large. Additionally, swine production generally was one of many enterprises on a diversified farming operation with production of row crops given primary emphasis. Thus, there was little interest among farmers in assuming the added responsibility, and much less the added capital investment, needed to manufacture feed on-farm. So, the model was to buy your feed from a local feed company or the local Co-op.