Farmer Focus: Excited about new retail acquisition

Feeling relieved as I sit here writing this time, for multiple reasons. First, harvest is finished!

A massive well done to all involved, particularly Ed our arable and contracting manager, who has had a heavy workload to handle during his first harvest with us.

Second, and it’s been a long, long time coming, we have finally completed on the acquisition of a sausage-making company.

See also: The value of the dead pig: Benefit of post-mortems

About the author

Jack Bosworth

Livestock Farmer Focus writer Essex pig farmer Jack Bosworth farms 263ha of arable and a 540-sow farrow-to-finish operation in partnership with his family. About 60% of pigs are finished at home and 150 are sent to a farm in Norfolk to finish on a bed and breakfast contract.

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I have been working on this deal for the past 11 months, so I am delighted and relieved we’ve got it over the line.

The acquisition is for the whole business: the retail shop, the production unit, the locally recognised brand established across 30 years, the staff, the recipes, and the machinery.

We have been keen to get further along the supply chain from farm to fork and this seemed a great opportunity to develop in that direction.

If you want to follow our progress and/or even try some of our fantastic products then please find Procters Sausages on Facebook.

On the farm, we’ve been reviewing some of the data we are getting as a result of our trial with Agsenze.

For those who haven’t read about it, Agrisys has supplied a weighing system which is being used in conjunction with a camera system installed for Agsenze to develop a condition scoring system based on digital images, rather than by individually weighing and/or naked eye scoring.

The data we are getting are individual weights of about 200 gilts and sows during gestation.

The animals go over the scales after every visit to the feeder, and we get a weekly average of those many readings to see how weight has changed over the course of the week.

It is already interesting to note that the system is giving Alex (our most experienced stockperson) new information that he doesn’t think he would have otherwise picked up by eye.

We are sitting down with our nutritionist in the next few weeks and this data will be used to demonstrate whether feed quality (and/or quantity) needs further optimisation, to keep within the parameters for age, parity and stage of gestation.