The University of Nebraska-Lincoln animal science professor, Dr. Rodger Johnson, with the help of Phil Miller and Darrell Mark conducted an Economic Analysis of the UNL Gilt Development Project.
"Because swine production is a low-margin business, producers have increasingly sought ways to increase efficiency in market pig production and gilt development. Restricting energy intake during gilt development has the potential to lower costs associated with gilt development, but the extent to which the lower costs offset production responses has not been previously analyzed.
This study utilized gilt development and market pig production data from biological studies that included a 2x2 factorial arrangement of half-sibling maternal lines (LWxLR and L45X) entering two gilt development programs. In one program, gilts were fed on an ad libitum basis. In the other, gilts were restricted to 75% of ad libitum energy intake from approximately 123 days of age until breeding (approximately 226 days of age).
The gilt development data were used along with historical average prices to develop deterministic enterprise budgets to evaluate the relative profitability of both the ad libitum and restricted energy gilt development programs for both genetic lines. Additionally, stochastic budgets were simulated using distributions of input and output prices to evaluate how the relative advantage of the two development programs changed under different market price scenarios."
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