Summer weight decline—due to the adverse impact of heat stress—presents a significant financial hurdle for producers, as it usually coincides with peak hog prices, thereby missing potential revenue opportunities. Resolving summer carcass weight decline represents a multimillion-dollar opportunity.

The standard approach to summer diet is to formulate to low invoice price. These formulations are increasingly high in DDG content and low in soybean meal content—a prescription for a low carcass weight, as the levels of DDGs commonly used suppress intake at a rate similar to the impact of heat stress, compounding the seasonal weight decline.

A high percentage of lighter-weight pigs can incur an extra associated discount. For integrated producer groups, especially, this can have even greater impact on cost. Because plant cost is essentially fixed, including the “shackle” cost of structural, operational, and equipment costs, and labor cost, sending a high number of pigs with average lower weights to the plant greatly increases the cost per unit of saleable meat. This equates to significantly fewer pigs by volume.