Weaner to grower: piggery turns waste into profit

Disease outbreaks, high maintenance costs and a fluctuating market remain constant risks for piggeries. As a result, farmers may experience losses and production delays. Jan Streicher, manager of the Riversdale Piggery, spoke to Henning Naudé about maintaining profitability through strict biosecurity measures and an efficient feed programme that capitalises on a waste product.

- Henning Naudé

Riversdale Piggery, located outside Riversdale in the Western Cape, officially went into production in 2020. It is collectively owned by Number Two Piggeries, an agricultural holding company primarily involved in the pork and dairy industries, and Jireh Foods, which owns several diversified farms and a dairy in the Riversdale area.

Jireh approached Number Two Piggeries with a mutually beneficial proposal: Number Two could provide piglets to Jireh, which they could grow out using highly nutritious whey produced during the cheesemaking process at Jireh’s dairy.

This means Number Two has an additional market for their piglets, and Jireh can turn whey - a waste product - into a money-spinner.

Jan Streicher, manager at Riversdale Piggery, has been in the industry for 22 years. He works alongside his wife, Susan, who manages the weaner piglets, and his son, Simon, who is an assistant manager on the farm. There are also six additional full-time staff members.

Riversdale Piggery is exclusively a boar weaner-to-grower farm; thus, no sows are kept.

The sows that provide piglets for Streicher are farmed separately in a farrow-to-weaner unit of 3 240 sows, located in Moorreesburg, called Alexandershoek Piggery, which is also owned by Number Two Piggeries. This way, Streicher avoids spending production time and input costs breeding his own piglets. Instead, he receives quality offspring from Number Two Piggeries.

"Sows are kept separately so that we have better outbreak control when diseases like African swine fever become a risk.

"Separating the operations allows us to avoid the entire production cycle potentially coming to a halt, which could cause major losses," says Streicher.