Rock Valley Bee du lieu suivant : Rock Valley, Iowa • Page 17

a October 1 HOGS Porkfest are sauti dida 000y- 141b Syd Grossenburg In His Operation, Hogs Have To Pay The Bills At the Syd Grossenburg farm two miles southwest of Rock Valley, hogs have been the name of the game for a long time. Syd's grandfather, who came to the Rock Valley area from Wisconsin and purchased the farm in 1913, started in the hog business around 1940. Syd's father purchased the. 160- acre place in 1942 and then Syd followed in 1963, both of them depending on their hog operation for a livelihood. Like others, Grossenburg, 39, has been involved in an expansion program in the past few years.

He added a 50-unit. farrowing house in 1970 and has also installed an eight-stall finishing unit that allows him to feed about 480 head at a time. Farrowing about 200 sows yearly, Grossenburg prefers to market about 1000 pigs each year and sell the balance of the pigs. he raises (another 1500 head) as feeders. "The advantage of selling feeders is simply that it gives me two ways of going," Grossenburg explains.

only farm a quarter, and so selling the feeders helps me to avoid having to buy so much grain. Selling half of my young pigs just seems like a better investment to me; otherwise, of course, I'd have to enlarge my finishing Supplement to the ROCK VALLEY BEE 1 We Salute Xi Grossenburg, however, find his baby pigs have serremains pretty optimistic ious disease problems. when he talks about the cur- When your luck runs out, rent hog outlook. "The way it it's a tough business." sounds--the futures, for ex- Grossenburg and his wife, ample--I don't see signs of a Marie, have three children; weakening market. Feed they are Brett, 11; Brian, 11; dealers report selling more and Jean Marie, 4.

creep feed, and that sug- unit, which would involve a gests there are more pigs sizeable being farrowed right now. Why did he decide to get But feel the market will into hog production in the probably stay pretty good way he has? Grossenburg until summer; another ten answers that one quickly. months, though, could bring "We don't have any 150 a wholly different picture." bushel an acre -corn produc- He insists that even with tion through here; in fact, 75 $64 cwt. hog prices, it isn't bushels is considered good. all that easy.

"The hogs I When was running raise and market have to do a around a dollar a bushel, a lot of things. They have to regrain farmer just. couldn't place equipment, and everymake it--he had to make it on one needs to recall that a the yard." tractor that cost $7,000 in Things have changed in 1965 now costs over $25,000. recent years, both with res- My hogs also have to pay virpect to the price of corn and tually all my family's bills--. hogs.

Grossenburg readily our clothes, food, and interacknowledges that the hog est expenses, for example. market's "been awfully As a result of being in hog good; frankly, I don't re- production, you must. remember anything like $64 member, we have no corn to hogs." sell. Our income has to come But he does a good through the price of memory and he knows how hogs." quickly things can change. "I The market price is not the remember 1963 when we only risk, either, says Groswere getting.

$28 for an en- senburg. "There's also the tire hog, and I also recall constant battle with disease. years like 1970 when the In the back of every hog promarket was terrific in August ducer's mind, there is the and by November, the fear that someday he'll walk bottom had dropped out." out to his farrowing unit and Sioux County PORK PRODUCERS Pork Production Is Important to Our Economy 1..