John Gadd
John Gadd, after training in Scotland 50 years ago, worked as stockman on several pig farms and managed several more before joining a large agricultural chemists as pig product manager. He was then technical director of a pig feed concentrate firm and also helped run their pig farm, then the largest in Britain.
Head-hunted by Britain's second largest feed firm to be their chief pig advisor, after 12 years he set up on his own as an international pig consultant, where over the past 24 years he has been problem solving on pig farms in 23 countries world-wide.
Well-known for his writing on pigs across 38 years, he has written over 2,600 articles and papers, all on pigs, winning several international writing awards. His third pig textbook was published in 2007.
His speciality is the cost-effectiveness of pig technology and has published a list of new terms to encourage everyone to measure performance in a more meaningful manner - aligned to profit as well as just physical performance. His monthly column "What the Textbooks Don't Tell You…" for Pig Progress is now in its 15th year.
Latest Blogs (51-60 of 56)
This might raise a few hackles in certain quarters! All the same, I am not
denigrating the strides which computer-recording has taken over the past 15
years - just suggesting that the subject's progress seems to me to have
levelled-out. Why do I say this? And what needs to be
done?
This is not an attack on the pig breeding companies world-wide, but an
opportunity to make a point which has troubled me for at least 20
years.
Pig producers world-wide seem to me to be hazy about
the need to recognise differences in immune levels for breeding stock and
grower/finisher pigs.
The cost of
incurring and treating enteric diseases (E coli scours, PED, Porcine
Enteropathy, Salmonellosis, Swine dysentery, Colitis, etc.) spread across the
whole finishing herd seems to be in the region of $1.90/pig (€1.60, £1.00),
raising production cost by about 2% finished pig.
Hands-on work comes naturally to most owners and
managers. It is enjoyable, satisfying and includes the instinct of a manager to
`know what is going on`. But this leads to the manager`s disproportionate
involvement in daily practical tasks and insufficient measuring, planning and
thinking.
