Farmscape for March 8, 2007  (Episode 2420)

Swine producers will have the opportunity to tour the University of Manitoba's new state of the art feed processing facility next week as part of a one day on-farm feed manufacturing workshop.

The National Centre for Livestock and the Environment, located at the University of Manitoba's Gleanlea Research Station, opened its new 1.5 million dollar feed mill Last summer.

An on-farm feed manufacturing workshop, next week will give swine producers an opportunity to tour the facility and learn more about how feed processing can affect profitability.

U of M associate professor Dr. Jim House notes the workshop is designed primarily for those involved in making feed on farm.

Clip-Dr. Jim House-University of Manitoba 

Within this facility we have the advantage of being able to provide hands on demonstration of feed formulation, feed processing, mixing and bring down to the producer the information that's going to be important for, for example, the impact of different grinding settings or different roller mill settings, how that might influence the production efficiency of the animals.

We'll be providing information about swine nutrition, selecting feed ingredients, feed formulation and in particular looking at cost and what are some of the options for helping to keep a lid on costs.

Certainly, if you look at the cost associated with raising a pig to market weight, feed can represent in excess of 60 percent of the production cost if not higher.

When you're looking at that then you need to identify where within the system can we realize some efficiencies because as we add those up they can certainly provide a substantial net return to the producer.

The workshop is slated for March 16.

Interested producers are encouraged to register by tomorrow by contacting the Canadian International Grains Institute or the University of Manitoba or by visiting the Canadian International Grains Institute web site a www.cigi.ca.

For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council