The Pig and the Public part 3

when you go to buy the bore you have things to watch for to you should know what the back fat measurement is that's the best single indication of the meat type characteristics on a live animal you'll want the bourse back fat to be lower than what you expect from the guilts and barrels that's to take into account the sex differences in fatness another thing is to be sure that the boar has been on a full feet better know your breeder enough to trust him when he gives you the answer to this question be sure to that he made rapid gains as Ralph puts it some boards with a low back fat reading aren't meet type they're just hungry while we're here I've got some real nice no I want a pork roast but I don't see any here that while these are pork roast ooh those are just marked down to sell they're pretty much picked over anything will sell you know if it's bryce lord now here's our nice one well it's too big and what's the other end look like why don't you let me cut it off right here well okay go wrong you know that your dad and I grew up together when we grew up he was one of my stockholders and I was his banker now I couldn't have been his banker without knowing quite a lot about the problems of the hog farmers take a look at this you would expect the banker to pull out something like this wouldn't you now here is a situation when the hog prices are low the processors and distributors get this much and the rest is a producer share now see what happens when the prices are high the processors and distributors still get about the same amount after all unless labor or transportation or costs like that have gone up there's no reason why it should cost much more to process a retailer hog solar and prices are high that it does to process a retailer hall souls and prices are rolled that leaves the big increase when prices are high for the farmer in other words when the prices are high the farmer gets a higher share of the hog dollar than when it's low now this chart is based on market changes but here's the idea in a sense the same situation would be true if the price of hogs was high because of excellent quality instead of being high because of market changes you sell a low quality low priced meat and you're over here you sell a high quality meat and you'll get over here where the ratio is all in your favor that's why we're interested in this we want to see as much as possible of the port dollar come back to the community makes sense the line but there's still one thing that bothers me how could it happen so quickly all of a sudden my homes are no good why what's changed times have changed Jim is not so long ago when lard and fatty cuts would bring just as much as the lean cuts today that's changed I had a chart here someplace oh yes back here in 1910 in fact all through that period well for every twenty dollars you got for your sold hogs about nine of those dollars came from large and fatty cuts 11 from the lean but here's the way it looks now about fourteen dollars comes from the lean and only six from the large and fat cuts see how much more dependent we are on the price of lean meat than we used to be income from lard and fat cuts is much smaller than it used to be your own crop soybeans has have something to do with that change now if the value of the whole hog depends largely on those lean cuts it simply means that the desires of the housewife are more important than ever and to top it off we're catching her at a time when she's more diet conscious than she ever was and when there's more competition for every dollar she spends than there ever was Jim you can take the easy way out go on raising the same kind of hogs after all somebody will buy them but you're not have to be happy about the price you get and you won't be doing your neighbor any good either on the other hand you can take the long-range view do what you can to raise a meteor hog you expect to be raising hogs more than a year or two the long-range view has paid off in the past and I believe it will pay off again to that means space spread out silly so important December marks September farmer just can't produce a whole new era by you've got to market up at the proper ways you can't trim fat out of the middle of a hang asim to means that the desires of the housewife are more important than ever anything else telling all of its price lower the long-range view has paid off in the back and I believe it'll pay off again too you Oh you you guess I'll call it jus she's go into the circle Charlie bad he's calling long distance he's buying a new bar bag wants to know the back fat measurement back fat 1.2 now I was to know if he's been on full feed how he want to have a David that he's on for feed you