Our billion pound journey continues to progress as we hit 740,000,000 million pounds at the end of Q3

Our billion pound journey continues to progress as we hit 740,000,000 million pounds at the end of Q3 and are currently ahead of pace now midway through Q4.

Our sow system has weaned 64,692 more pigs in the last 12 months than the previous 12 months, and we are .5 pigs better in total born and born alive. Our employees who work in our GDUs and on the sow farms have had quite a year, not only making tremendous improvements on their farms every day to hit their breeding targets and do an awesome job of day one care, but also many have concurrently managed through an extensive farm remodel to implement positive filtration and pen gestation, or are going through a PRRS stabilization project or depop/repop.

To add some perspective, just imagine managing a restaurant that was under a complete remodel for 14 months, while teams of construction crews and support teams were in your way and underfoot all hours of the day. They also commandeered all of your workspace, so you had to have your supplies and food stored at other restaurants in other communities. But somehow your patrons never noticed, in fact you served a record number of delicious and quality meals to even more satisfied customers than ever before in the history of your restaurant. In true Iowa Select Farms spirit--that is what our production, transportation and construction team have accomplished!

On the finishing side, our technicians, site managers, supervisors and veterinarians are focusing even more time and attention on early pig care (first six weeks in the finishers) and it’s working. Even more people are walking through the barns more often to get more eyes on every pig to observe health and monitor environmental conditions and feed and water intake. They have a laser focus on pigs that are struggling, sorting them out and giving them special care, then working together to proactively address health concerns.

And the extra work has paid off—hats off to the entire finishing team for their year-on-year performance as they have made a big impact on improving finishing mortality by almost 50,000 pigs and increased pigs marketed by 80,000 pigs versus last year.

The rate and speed at which our teams can now see and share production information is astounding compared to just a few years ago. Our production leaders, vets and supervisors can now pull up live farm data—for all of our 600+ farms—on their smartphones 24:7. This means treatment records, mortality, feed deliveries, water and feed intake, barn temperatures, etc., can be accessed by all of our production leaders at any time of the day. More people in the barns along with more “bird’s eye” views is getting mortality down in finishing and we’re sending more pigs to market!

As we progress through Q4 our market numbers are increasing seasonally and we are now marketing over 21,000,000 pounds a week through end of the year which means we are on pace to hit our goal. Fingers crossed. Everyone keep up the outstanding work—your dedication to pig care and hitting this goal is not only humbling, but hand’s down, unparalleled. #billionpounds

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