What Does Attrition Cost and What Is It Worth to Reduce?1

From an industry perspective, if pork is to be competitive with other protein sources (i.e., beef, poultry, and fish), then it is imperative that the industry produces a high quality product at the lowest cost possible. Furthermore, because average long-run profits are zero in a competitive industry, from an individual producer’s perspective it is critical to be a low cost producer. While producing a high quality product is important, this paper focuses strictly on costs of production. There are numerous factors that ultimately impact the cost of production and many of these factors are interrelated. However, to quantify the impact of a specific factor that producers have to make management decisions about, requires an economic analysis that focuses on this key factor. Specifically, this paper examines the impact sow attrition rate has on the cost and returns of producing a weaned pig. This information is useful for producers as they identify strategies for culling sows that best fit into their operations. The effect parity has on sow productivity has been widely researched and based on this research optimal parity distributions have been suggested.1-4 However, the economic consequences of varying from this optimal distribution have not been quantified. In other words, the following question has not been answered, How does the cost of production and the resulting economi