Posted March 26, 2010
There continues to be fewer hogs in Iowa and across the U.S.
The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service issued its Hog and Pig Report for March today and it shows that the number of swine in Iowa as of March 1 was 18.9 million. That’s down 2 percent from December and 3 percent from the same month a year ago.
Iowa breeding stock was down 3 percent to 30,000 head and the number of market hogs dropped from 18.4 million to 17.8 million head from March 2009.
Total inventory of hogs and pigs in the U.S. as of March 1 was pegged at 64 million head, a decline of 2 percent from Dec. 1 and 3 percent from March 1, 2009.
Total U.S. breeding inventory was 5.76 million head. That’s a 2 percent decline from the previous quarter and a drop of 4 percent from last year. The market hog inventory was 58.2 million, down 2 percent from December and 3 percent from March 2009.
USDA reports the December 2009 to February 2010 Iowa pig crop was 4.63 million head. A total of 475,000 sows farrowed with an average litter size of 9.75 pigs per litter.
As of March 1, Iowa producers planned to farrow 480,000 head of sows and gilts between March and May, the same number for the June to August period.
Overall in the March to May period, producers across the nation expect farrowings to be 4 percent less than the actual farrowings during the same quarter last year.
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