Hard Work Rewarded with First Place SelectPride Finishes in Q2 & Q4
posted on Thursday, January 31, 2019
As a multiplication nursery, the crew at Lynch G15 takes a lot of pride in stocking sow farms with the highest quality gilts.
“We know that the pigs from our farm play a huge role in the productivity of our system as a whole,” said Chad. “It’s not something that we take lightly.”
Between Chad Drake, Audrey Shelley and Rob Smyser, the three Iowa Select Farms’ employees care for nearly 60,000 nursery gilts every year. Their hard work was rewarded recently with first place SelectPride finishes in both quarters two and four of 2018.
“It’s just about consistently putting in the hard work,” said Rob. “When we do everything right and everything goes good, we have just as good of a chance to win as anybody.”
But it sounds like they might not be giving themselves enough credit. According to supervisor Tysen Abell and director of multiplication, Shamus Brown, DVM, the three do an exceptional job managing their farms.
“Historically, this is the group that has set the bar for other multiplication nurseries,” said Shamus. “When it comes to mortality, site assessments or simply completing daily tasks, Chad, Audrey and Rob always go above and beyond what’s expected of them.”
In their role as a multiplication nursery, they receive newly weaned gilts and provide care for the next nine to fourteen weeks. They spend, on average, two to three hours at each farm every day choring, walking pens, checking feed, air and water, treating sick animals and record keeping.
From their farms—Lynch, Blanchard and Rasmussen—gilts go to a multiplication nursery and then eventually make their way to a sow farm.
“Multipliers are very important for our system,” explained Tysen. “The healthier the herd, the higher quantity and quality of gilts we have to choose from, meaning only the best of the best actually make it to a sow farm. High performing gilts reduce sow lameness and increase overall productivity."
To compete for a top spot in SelectPride, farms must meet their goals and also receive high scores on their animal well-being, biosecurity and supervisor site assessments.
Most recently, the team at Lynch received a 100% on their biosecurity assessment (5.0% above target), 98.5% on their animal well-being assessment (3.5% above target) and only had 1.3% mortality (1.2% below target).
“We truly can’t say enough good things about this crew,” continued Shamus. “They’re extremely reliable, do a great job caring for their pigs and take a lot of pride in what they do. Those three factors right there set them up for success no matter what.”
Congratulations to Chad, Audrey and Rob on an awesome year!
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