Tim Burnside, swine farm manager at I & S Furrer Farms in Wolcott, Indiana, spoke at the Four Star Veterinary Service Pork Industry Conference in Muncie, Indiana, to share his experience as a swine farm manager.
Tell us about I & S Furrer Farms.
We have about 1,800 sows and are a farrow-to-finish operation with three finishing facilities. At any given time, we have 24,000 to 25,000 animals on feed.
I oversee farm management and leave the physical work to his team. One of my responsibilities is lining up the pig marketing, which can be challenging.
You have to make appointments to send market animals anymore, and we sell five days a week, but sometimes six or seven loads a week, and wean about 1,100 pigs every week. I’d really like finishing space for about 2,000 more pigs. I keep the facilities really full, so we need at least two more weeks’ worth of finishing space.
We are a closed herd and raise our own breeding stock on the farm. I really like that concept, and I think it’s helped our productivity quite a bit.
Tell us about your team.
I manage 11 farm staff, and they are like family to me. Our productivity is fairly high; we push close to 30 pigs per sow per year, and our sow death rate is very, very low because everybody pays attention to what they’re doing. I have one gentleman that’s been working with me for almost 20 years, and I have several that have been with me for more than 10 years.
I like continuity and think it lends a lot to the farm’s productivity. I don’t want to have the revolving door with my team, so if I think I’m getting a chip on my shoulder I knock it off because I want them to know that I care about them and about what’s going on in their lives, so that they respond to me in return.
I do like to tease and joke with people. I think it helps develop a community aspect among our team. And like I said, I really like my guys. We’re kind of like a big family.
How does the farm perform?
When it comes to performance, I’d like to bring down our pre-weaning mortality, but with as many pigs that sows are having today, that’s tough to do.
Our average piglets weaned per litter is pretty good, but like everyone, we’d like to see it go up. But we’ll really need to refine our process to improve that number.
We do make an effort to dry down the piglets at birth. A lot of farms use paper towels or cloth towels – it doesn’t matter what you use, but I think it’s important for survivability. Those piglets don’t like it when you pick them up, handle them and rub them down. But it gets their heart rate up and makes them more active. Once they’re put back into the crate with the sow, they’re ready to look for dinner right now.
People seem impressed with our female death rate percentage per year. I get really concerned if we lose any more sows than where we are currently at. I think our sow numbers are due to people paying close attention to what’s going on. Plus. I think genetics has a lot to do with it.
Tim, you talked about a recent E. coli outbreak. How did you tackle that as a team?
“I dropped the ball on that one. I’d had surgery a few weeks prior, and I wasn’t able to get around to visit all the facilities like I usually do. We have a young man overseeing our three quad facilities. He doesn’t have a lot of experience under his belt yet, but he’s very dedicated. I had failed to relate to him that if all the sudden you start to see a high death rate, get hold of me right away. Unfortunately, the E. coli got ahead of us.
I thought it was E. coli, but I wanted to make sure. So I got hold of our veterinarian staff over at Four Star’s Peru, Indiana location, and they sent out Dr. Aaron Lorenz. He agreed that it looked like an E. coli outbreak, so we discussed our options. We started treatment, but the E. coli outbreak already had a few days start, so we we lost quite a few pigs. I’ve never had that issue before, so it was a new one for me.
Again, my team member on site is not at fault. I want to build him up because I need him. He’s my arms, eyes and ears to what’s going on. Everybody can learn from their experiences – me included.
What do you expect from your veterinarian?
I’ve had some veterinarians come in with this big chip on their shoulder, and they swagger in and act like they know everything and you, as a farm manager, know nothing. I never get along with those types of people very well.
I can learn from anybody. I want the veterinarians to come in and get to know me. I want to get to know them. I want them to have empathy towards me and my staff because when we’ve had large disease outbreaks and we’re losing a lot of animals, that’s hard on your emotions – some of us more so than others.
I take on the responsibility for euthanizing animals because most people don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do it either and after a week of doing it, I am almost in tears in the morning because I have to go to work that day. It is emotionally hard on a person. When the veterinarians come in, I need them to have that in the back of their mind – that it’s not only the animals that are struggling, but that these people are struggling too.
What’s your most important role?
One of my biggest roles is to relate experiences I’ve had in my past to others because I need to transition my responsibilities over to the team. I’m 66 years old, and I’m not going to be around forever. I need the team to be able to step up and do what needs done – because they’ve seen me do it or I’ve taught them how to do it.
I don’t always think this way, but I need to have more of a mindset that I need to train the team to be able to do everything I can do, not just the aspects they are doing now. I don’t want them to ever have to second guess their decisions. I need to help prepare them for different scenarios that may come their way on any given day.
