Investing wisely in on-farm trials: On-farm research takes time and effort, so make sure the results are of use

摘要

AN ON-FARM TRIAL IS an investment in your business, so before starting a trial it is important to truly understand the question you are trying to answer. Most on-farm feed trials will never give the result they were set up to provide. In many cases they could have easily been decided by a coin toss, saving a lot of time, labour and expense. The most practical feed trials for pork producers are those involving nursery or finishing pigs. In the breeding herd, feed trials are often not feasible to conduct because it is difficult to get adequate replication (that is, to accurately detect 0.5 pigs per litter difference between two sow feeds you will need 388 sows per feed type).