Well we are getting a soaking rain!!! Time for planning.

We may get 1-2 inches of rain today and later tonight. It is making everything a MESS. It melted all the snow from last week and is just making everything MUDDY. So basically did chores and eat an slept today. LOL

The boy and I did have a little time to hash over some plans for the coming year. We are moving forward with building two hog confinement buildings. The sites have been approved for 4-5 years. I had the dirt work done two years ago. With the youngest son buying some land close to the site it became a GO with plenty of places to use the additional manure. This will allow the youngest to limit or even quit working an outside job. He is leaning towards still working seasonally. The company he works for has welding work year round so they are favorable with seasonal employment. So next year will be another busy one.

With the cheaper prices of grain and the livestock markets doing some what better we think focusing on the feeding part of the business will be the safest in the next 24 months or so. With the additional manure we can reduce input costs as well. I have some price protection under the grain and livestock for another year. It is paying dividends this year. So we should be OK for the near term and we hope the markets/inputs settle down to a more reasonable level. The markets over reacted and now they are showing that the production can out pace demand. There will be players weeded out in this cycle. I think those that are not diversified will have hard time.

PS to the fellow that could not imagine 2500 bales of corn stalks. Since last Friday we have used 175 bales. There will be 30-40 used tomorrow with this sloppy rainy/mess we are having. In this type of weather you can go through bedding real fast!!!

It is 35 here and still raining hard, looks like heavier stuff still to move through.

You should see it about 45 minutes later.

Will you own the hogs or contract feed? Having driven a truck a lot you probably have the site well thought out, meaning no blind side up hill backing off of a narrow gravel road.

fixerupper: The hogs will be feed under contract. The days of owning hogs are over for most people today. The margins are just too small for it to really be worth the added risk. We will get paid x amount per head per year. The labor, manure handling and building maintenance are all on us and come out of the rate per hog.

As for location and ease of access. They both will have circle drives around the entire building. You need to access the different sections of the under floor manure storage anyway. So why worry about mud and mess. The entire loop will be well graveled. To load out or unload you will just loop around the building and line up for a straight back to the CEMENT loading chute. No portable half rotten loading chute for me. LOL The two buildings will hold 2500 finished pigs each.

I knew you would have it well planned out. It takes someone who has been there and done it to be a good hog site planner.

In my neck of the woods we are inundated with hog confinements and only a fraction of a percent of them have hogs owned by the farmer. I don't see how those guys make ends meet with the tight margins. The manure is the reason why a lot of them are built, along with giving the farmer a steady job taking care of the hogs. Livestock and feed haulers make a living off of the confinements too. Modern hog farming is a good industry for the farmer though some guys won't admit it.

(quoted from post at 21:30:24 11/26/15) Will you own the hogs or contract feed? Having driven a truck a lot you probably have the site well thought out, meaning no blind side up hill backing off of a narrow gravel road.

Click to expand...

Now where is the fun in that? LOL.

Will you be putting in a pump system to pump the manure out to the field?

So you have slatted floors and the manure piles up underneath to be dragged out periodically? The latest design I have heard of in chicken houses does it that way. I think the plan is to clean it out once a year.

The last hog facility I looked at, a long time ago, had sloping concrete floors and had the manure hosed down to a gutter and into a lagoon. I get the impression that the government regulators are constantly changing their minds about what is "best" and come out with new expensive regulations periodically.
Sounds like the savings on fertilizer for you is a big part of the profit margin.

KEH

Just checked the gauge and since it started yesterday afternoon I've had 3 inches of rain...Just to the west and north of me they've had 4-6 inches of rain...It will rain here until Monday evening....I was going to a large farm estate sale today west of Ft Scott,KS but will call the auctioneer before heading out...
Sale

Owning hogs may be over for most people due to small margins and volatility.

But after reading some of the horror stories about raising chickens on contract; I can not see why anyone would ever want to get into this type of business. Maybe hogs are different.

Years ago I raised dairy replacements (very small scale as a hobby) on contract and it was nothing like the contracts I see today.
I owned everything except the calf. I let my reputation speak for itself in the quality of the replacements.

KEH" There will be slated floors with the pit under the building. The manure stays a liquid and is agitated and pumped out twice each year.

We will have a hose drag operator do the manure spreading. There are two contractors right in the area that do this service. I would not want to own that equipment myself. Too expensive and high maintenance.

John The hog contracts are pretty simple. You get paid so much a head to feed and house the pig. You do not own the pig or pay for the feed. Your outlay is the building and labor. It is nothing like the chicken contracts where I think the grower actually owned the chickens, at least on paper. We will be getting pigs in that will weight 12-16 LBS. Then finish them to 220-230 lbs.

Who shoulders the risk of a disease outbreak ?

With a chicken contract you do not own the birds or feed.
You are paid on a sliding scale based on feed conversion rates.
So the guy that raises big birds on little feed gets paid the best.
Some like it some complain about it; but all went into the contract knowing the terms so if they go bankrupt so be it.
Sounds like a win; win situation for the grocery shopper as it causes low chicken prices at the store and weeds out poor growers.

The problem is.......
If some pencil pushing big wheel gets a idea that this new thing reduces feed cost per pound of bird; the farmers are forced to install this new idea; at a cost to the farmer; before the next batch of chicks will be sent out.

Lets just say you have a pig contract.
Everything is going good.
Then threw research they find out that pigs gain more weight on less feed by doing XXXXXXX
You are then told to install XXXXXXX or you will no longer be one of our growers.
Now you have a problem. You have a building half paid for so you need to stay in the business; but installing XXXXXXX reduces your income below a level you are willing to except.
They just changed your contract mid flight and there is nothing you can do about it.

It would be like a grain elevator saying we do not want your corn if you use expensive John Deere tractors or grow it on land that does not produce 200 BPA.

I'm not in the business so I only know what I read; but contract raising seems like a win win for the big companies; and a manure pit for the farmer.

love it when say reduce input cost but spend 700,000 to 950,000 per building to reduce costs and no return till 7 to 10 years on building. i hope the one you have contract with does not do like in my area said goodbye. i hope you guys like dragging dead pigs out daily. good luck been there

For 35 years I shipped milk. Everything was in control of someone else. And the profit was also with someone else. It's kind of like the pastor of a church driving a Cadillac and the members come to church in a horse and buggy cause that's all they can afford to drive.

Wow! Still hard for me to imagine 2500 corn stalk bales. Then, next spring all that corn stalk manure has to be hauled back out to the fields!! True Son

hen you put those buildings up DO YOURSELF A BIG FAVOR i.nstall an I beam trolley and hoist system to take out the dead pigs. that just plain suc!!!!s trying to drag dead hogs out every day, you will . one down road from me has wo dumpsters full every other day.

Only to 220 to 230? Sounds about 50 lbs too light to me?? Or is this some special market? True Son

My cousin had a hog farrowing house that he raised piglets for his FIL that grew them out.

I thought he had a neat manure system.
The house was built with a solid concrete floor with a concrete ledger on the 2 long sides of the hog cage run.
The house was long enough to hold 4 or 5 hogs on each run.
The pigs were raised a few inches above this concrete floor.

On one end of the house was a outside manure pond.
On the other end was a water tank.
It looked like a large tank cut in half long ways.
He had a faucet above it that put water into the half tank.
As the tank filled with water it was mounted off center to where if full with water it would dump automatically but would sit upright when empty.
You adjusted the water flow out the faucet to meet the interval at how often you wanted the tank to dump.
When the tank got full it would dump automatically and a flood of water would rush threw the house just under the pigs washing all the manure out the other end of the house into the pond.

I think the additional manure is a big benefit to you.

My neighbor owns 3-4 of these around the state, he gets a couple free hogs each year, is that part of your contract?

My understanding is using that much extra water increases the cost of hauling and spreading the manure quite a bit.

Several of them in this county. Seems like every month there is another big dust up between neighbors and the hog barn over the odor. Farmers nearby were guaranteed (ha) that there would be no odor. But that lasted only until the first piglets arrived.
Be sure and check with existing homeowners for at least a 7 mile radius. You may find yourself in court quite often. Plus they get vandalized pretty often. Install good security system.

I do find it kind of ironic that livestock confinement is not subject to odor emission regulations. I work in the industrial controls market, so emission/odor controls is a regular part of what I do. It would be easy to control the emissions from a confinement by changing to a negative airflow with scrubbers. The effluent from the scrubbers could be added to the manure, it would be high in nitrogen so good for crops.

ztrmower: You can spend that easily on other farm related equipment and NEVER get to the break even point. These buildings will break even in 5 years. The expected life span of the original equipment is 10 years. The building itself 30-40 The slats will be epoxy coated so they should last as long as the building. We are building the gates/pens ourselves. We will be powder coating all of the carbon steel parts of that.

We will have considerably less in these buildings than the fellows that hire a turn key building setup. We will save $20K just on building the gates/pens ourselves.

How about a membrane over the lagoon to catch both odor and methane. Then you can generate electricity for the county.

Sounds like what my Grandfather went through at the end of the 80s. He was a dairy farmer and pretty up to date on the latest techniques. Hog and Chicken farms were moving into the area and (the way i understand it) a guy at the University of Maryland research farm nearby convinced Grandad this was the way to go. The manure would compliment the dairy, etc. I have articles that we're written about him in local farming publications at the time. It all sounded rosey. Grandad said he took the contract to a few different business men around that he respected, and asked their opinions. All of them told him to run. He decided to do it anyway. Built a huge building, to their newest specs. I forget how many pigs. It was farrow to finish. Said from the first load the pigs weren't putting on weight like they should, and had higher than expected death loss. Along with the neighbor complaints and newspaper articles. Penfield said you need to change this and that on your building. He did, still didn't help with the pigs or the smell. Went on for a few years then he got a letter in the mail saying "as of such-and-such date, Penfield is no longer in the Pig business". Took the contract to Lawyers, looked into other outfits to sell pigs to. Couldn't do a thing. Grandad was stuck with a big building and a lot of bills.

He got through it somehow. I like to think he has an above average mind for the business of farming, so if he couldnt make it work I dont think anyone could have, with the contract he had at least. The building was converted to self storage years later. I was 7 or 8 when all this was happening, but he told me all about it a little while ago.

Like I said though, this was the 80s. 25 years of business evolution and most certainly a different situation. And you still see hog barns going up obviously, so I guess it must work for someone. I just get a bad feeling whenever I see a post about someone putting up a hog barn. The optimism and situations of the farmer sound familiar and I always hope it turns out better for them than it did for many around here.

So how close is your nearest neighbor what does he think of your grand plans. Will his wife still be able to hang clothes on the line? Can he sit on his patio or deck without smelling your operation or doesn't this matter to you. I wonder what type of neighbor you will be when this operation goes "live"

This contract is not with a packer. There are a few that are in this area but most are not. The pigs owners have a farrowing unit that is producing 2500 pigs each month. If this person does not work out there are no fewer than 8-9 others that you can work with in this area.

dzc3: It sounds like you have already judged our operation and YOU do not have DARN thing to do with it!!!!!!! Read my original post. This has been in the planning for FIVE years. A large part of this is getting through all the red tape on the site approval. One of the Guide lines that is that there can not be a dwelling within 2375 feet. There is not dwelling within 3500 feet of these locations. Those are both to the west of the buildings. To the south east which is the direction the primary winds blow it is over 6500 feet to the nearest dwelling. I do not think that fellow will complain too much as he two 2500 pig barns of his own within 1500 feet of his house. So who's manure will he smell first??

Also you making some wild guess on how "good" a neighbor I will be. I guess we will not be up to "YOUR" standards with modern barns with the manure 100% contained under them, with controlled ventilation and run off never an issue. I bet you would love the guy just to the north of my home farm. He is all organic and only has 30 sows an he fattens up just his own pigs in an open pasture. Well guess what??? He puts more manure into the river than we would ever do. Every single time we get big summer rains his "pasture" gets flushed/washed clean of the manure there. Since he never has more than 250-300 hogs he does not have to comply with any of the set back rules or manure management rules we have to. I would like you to drive by his lots in the middle of July on a nice hot humid day. It stinks to high heaven there.

Well here is my thought to YOU!!! There have always been a lot of hogs grown around Cascade Iowa. They used to be ALL out on grass pastures. Farrowed outside year round. This was the normal way until about 15 years ago and the confinement buildings started show up around here. In the 1970s and 1980s you could smell hogs in town 365 day a year. Now you almost never do. In a two mile circle around town there are more hogs there now than there ever where before.

Thanks to people like your self, that prejudge the operation without a SINGLE FACT, it has taken five years and close to $25K to get this through all the hurtles. Now I want every single home owner to go through this to get permission to build anywhere in the country???? Think it will happen???

Here is another thing that really POs me. None of our homes have or need a security system. Both of these barns will have coded entry locks and a full 24/7 security system. It is required by any of the contracts we looked at. The hog finishing business is a target for too many eco vandals.

Must be a nice feeling to expand knowing a son is coming into the operation, congrats on that.

We are exploring putting up a barn like yours, just looking at the hoops we have to jump through is almost too discouraging to go any further. Knowing you made it through gives us hope.

The only thing I find troubling is your plan to circle trucks around your building's to make it easy to back in. I agree, it shouldn't be a hassle to get feed in and pigs out, but I would reconsider bringing trucks any further into the operation than necessary.

Good luck with your plans. I look forward to building updates....... it may help us out.

Tim