Price of show feeds...EEEEK!

brahmergirl · Post by **brahmergirl** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 9:45 pm

Ok, so I think I will be eating Kraft Macaroni and cheese everyday for lunch. I went on my lunch hour and bought show feeds for my kiddos critters. We just got them this weekend so I was only buying a couple of bags until I see what I want to do with them. Bought 3 bags Purina Senior Horse, two bags Purina Layena chicken feed, 1 bag calf manna, and two bags of Moorman's sale prep. I almost died. $210 for all of it. That will only last maybe two weeks for now.

You know, the corn thing is getting pretty bad. Now, don't flame me yet as we raise corn also but we bought a corn stove two years ago to cut down on propane costs, now you can't afford to farm corn and around here we can't even get it in the ground. So now we are considering a wood stove. Trees are free, we realize it now. But that corn is blooming ridiculous.

I went to buy a bag of Moorman's the other day just to have over the weekend in case we went and got our pigs I told the clerk what I wanted, she told me it was almost $30 I said "oh, I only wanted 50 lbs. she said that is for 50 lbs. I almost died.

hampy622 · Post by **hampy622** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 10:11 pm

im thinking you go ripped off you averaged like 26 dollars a bag. At least the pig feed was a starter.

brahmergirl · Post by **brahmergirl** » Mon Apr 14, 2008 10:16 pm

That's what I thought too until I went to the local elevator after that and they carry some of the feeds that I bought. Their's had all went up $3-9 dollars a bag in the last two weeks they said. So I felt a little better but our gas jumped 24 cents a gallon from lunch to after I got off of work also. Was $3.24 a gallon, now $3.48 a gallon.

Pen_1 · Post by **Pen_1** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 6:05 am

We fed Purina Show Chow last year....good feed but like everyone has realized times are tough so we are going with a grind feed from our local elevator to reduce costs. Got them on 22% starter now and will probably have them start grinding Moormans (can't remember the number) the next order.

2rivers · Post by **2rivers** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:40 am

Count your blessings gas here is $3.79 as of last night.

ms · Post by ms » Tue Apr 15, 2008 12:11 pm

We can only get Moormans here. We have 17

that we are feeding Sales Prep to at almost $20.00 a bag! Ouch!!

Yontz710 · Post by **Yontz710** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 2:02 pm

ms wrote:We can only get Moormans here. We have 17 that we are feeding Sales Prep to at almost $20.00 a bag! Ouch!!

MS I can trump that, we will have 22 when I get them all. Thankfully we have corn and soybeans and I don't have to buy those, but with the tweaking I am trying to do with the feed to make sure it is the best I can get it, it is still going to cost plenty. I had never taken the time to figure how much feed we go through in a show season, until this year. We are looking at around 5 ton of feed, if the figure 10 bags per pig is pretty accurate. Add bedding and paylean on to that and our costs may be ugly.
But I have always said, that show season is our vacation. Some people have nice RV's, some go away to a sunny spot, we go to a barn.

brahmergirl · Post by **brahmergirl** » Tue Apr 15, 2008 9:40 pm

We too vacation at our "barn". This year our saddle club is trying to have low priced entry fees and events for the kids around so that people don't have to drive very far to go to things. It's amazing how much it is affecting everyone. A load of rock that should cost me $100 is almost $200 that I need for my pens. But I went ahead and ordered all of my feeds today so that should help some before prices go up again. *sigh*

Yontz710 · Post by **Yontz710** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 5:47 am

brahmergirl wrote:We too vacation at our "barn". This year our saddle club is trying to have low priced entry fees and events for the kids around so that people don't have to drive very far to go to things. It's amazing how much it is affecting everyone. A load of rock that should cost me $100 is almost $200 that I need for my pens. But I went ahead and ordered all of my feeds today so that should help some before prices go up again. *sigh*

It is great that your saddle club is trying to help local kids. My kids love to go to open shows, and since ISJC was giving points for all breeds shown at state fair, we thought that it might be fun to try to go a lot of the shows this summer. Too bad most are 100+ miles away for kids in the north. No way can we afford, the pigs, the feed, and then add that much gas at $3.50+ a gallon.

kam · Post by **kam** » Wed Apr 16, 2008 8:09 am

I paid $4.19 for diesel yesterday and this morning it was $4.25. I'm going to start car pooling with a friend after I get the sows bred for showpigs (hopefully by mid May). The fuel is killing me faster than the feed right now - I drive 42 miles each way to work. My ground sow feed was $8.80 a bag last month. I'm sure its gone up again this month..... I have been talking to the feed mill about making the local kids a show feed, we just haven't gotten all the details worked out on it yet, but they were paying about $20 - $22 for Sunglo in February. I don't know what Moormans was running. We're in the southern part of Florida, so we have limited choices. I was surprised to find that the ton price on the sow feed isn't too far different from the rest of the world.

kgb · Post by **kgb** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 9:34 pm

If you're interested, HONOR has a new showpig feed being test marketed in California and the Eastern Cornbelt (OH, IN, MI). It's called HONOR Showpig Solution 18 T100. It's an 18% crude protein, 1% lysine, 3.5% crude fat pelleted feed.

It's a solid feed, but doesn't have the bells and whistles of the other HONOR feeds. For that you can use topdresses like Champion Drive and Power Fuel.

Sorry for the advertising...really. But it is about $2.00 or so less than Showpig Grower.

During high feed prices....thought you'd like to know your options.

Darin · Post by **Darin** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:50 pm

Good to see you on the forum kgb! Will you be at WPX this year?

kgb · Post by **kgb** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 10:28 am

Yes I will. We'll have a tent on the West side of the Swine Barn. Come by and we'll visit and drink a pop. Might even have some samples for you.

Darin · Post by **Darin** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 10:33 am

Sounds great. See you there!

pork_chop_express · Post by **pork_chop_express** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 11:43 am

KGB,

Is the new feed basically Finisher with less fat?

BTW ... I like the article and chart that you put on your website on guidelines to hand feed to help off set some of the feed costs. Plan on distributing that info to our kids in our 4-H club and let them do with it what they want. We typically let our pigs on full feed, but like everybody else .... we're trying to see what we can do to avoid cost without hurting the pigs.