Analysis of the financial impact of using Tonisity Px on farms and the potential return of investment considering all cost inputs

Under the current market situation, where the cost of production is higher than the market price, swine producers are looking for all possible ways to increase efficiency. Reducing costs as much as possible is the first and natural reaction. However, other options must be considered because they will ultimately lead to a significant return.

The use of Tonisity Px, even though it only represents a very small part of the cost to produce a pig (about 0.05%), can sometimes be perceived as an expense that can be avoided. And farm managers can be reluctant to adopt the programme, because they only consider the cost: “€0.69 per pig sold, representing a cost of €11,000 per year for a 500-sow farm”.

Indeed, seen like this, you may be hesitant.

Therefore, it is essential to look at the return on investment and be able to translate into terms of economic gains the possible improvements following the implementation of such a programme. This requires having different technical results and, in particular, knowing parameters to measure such as Average Daily Gain, FCR, or mortality. For each batch, the exact record of performance in farrowing (in particular, born alive and preweaning mortality) as well as post-weaning performance are important data. It is also useful to consult the numbers from the slaughter house, for each pig, to evaluate the performance of a given batch (as long as the batches are clearly identified before selling your pigs) and other information such as the mortality per batch. With the help of these different tools, you will be able to calculate the financial impact of the implementation of the programme and to judge “how much money do I get back for every euro I invest, using Tonisity Px on my farm?”

The importance of a global vision

Taking the results obtained in a farrow to finish, 500-sow farm in France (which represents well those who tested this programme), we observe the following improvements (Table 1)

Table 1. Analysis of the impact of Tonisity Px on technical and economic performance

– the number of weaned piglets increased by 3% (13.73 weaned per litter versus 13.32 before the implementation of the programme). This corresponds to a reduction in mortality of 20% (10.40% vs. 13.10%). This is consistent with 70 other trials carried out on nearly 150,000 piglets.

– an increased weaning weight of 250 grams (7.35kg against 7.10kg before the implementation of the programme). This has been proven and validated in many farms, and can be explained by a better consumption of sow milk on the one hand (more vigorous piglets), and an increase in creep feed consumption, especially in the last days before weaning.

– a slightly lower fattening mortality (2.3% against 2.5%) and a reduced fattening period by five days, i.e. 144 days compared to 149 from wean to finish. As the average selling weight per pig remained constant (124kg or 94.1kg of carcass) the ADG from wean to finish increased from 783 to 809 grams, an improvement of 3.3%.

– it is also very important to note, in this period of very high feed costs, the wean to finish Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR) index has been reduced from 2.67 to 2.63, which allows a reduction in feed costs of €1.62 per pig (€93.43 against €95.05).

A return on investment of 3:1

If we consider a carcass price of €1.40 per kilo (€1.25 + €0.15 premium) we observe that the extra income provided by the 511 additional pigs sold amounts to €67,255. This generates an additional margin of €33,788 (which corresponds to €67,255 of additional income, minus €22,483 for the additional feed cost, and €10,984 for the cost of the treatment programme using Tonisity Px). This allows us to obtain a return on investment of 3.1 to 1.

In practice, it is not uncommon for this return on investment to be higher, because there is often an improvement in the premium paid, due to a better muscle content of the meat, and more pigs in the range (better homogeneity of the lots). A reduction in antibiotic treatments is often observed, although it is harder to attribute that to the treatment alone.

Table 2. Analysis of different costs and overall return on investment

In conclusion, even if the economic conditions are not favourable today (pork prices too low and feed costs too high), the use of Tonisity Px allows substantial performance improvements, which lead to significant returns on investment. These therefore deserve to be calculated, to properly assess the economic interest of setting up such a treatment programme.

Our team is at your disposal to accompany you in this process. Visit www.tonisity.com for more information, or for sales enquiries, please contact orders@tonisity.com.

Table 3. Return on investment with Tonisity Px under different price scenarios

Feed prices: from 7-12kg (nursery) €750 per tonne, from 12-25kg (post weaning) €420 per tonne and €270 per tonne for the fattening feed (25-125kg).