Producer Profile: The Lukes Brothers
Kiven and Kurt Lukes own and operate a 3,400-sow farrow to finish swine enterprise located near Glenville, MN—a moderately pig dense area of the Midwestern USA. Kiven runs their feed mill and grow finish side of the enterprise with a group of about 12 contract growers. Kurt runs the sow farm with nine other employees.
The Lukes Brothers have been a Fast Genetics customer for about two years and continue to achieve outstanding results, regardless of recent disease pressures, with the latest seen below:
- 32.09 PMFYr
- 90.5% Farrowing rate
- 17.20 Total born average
- 15.50 Born alive average
- 12.38 Pigs weaned/sow farrowed
- 8.4% Sow death loss rate
Kurt believes that the key factors in their high productivity levels are:
- Being able to avoid disease outbreaks in their area and staying healthy with minimal piglet scour issues.
- Maintaining uniform and consistent female body condition in the sow herd.
- Achieving excellent lactation feed intakes to keep the females in good condition coming out of farrowing.
- The robustness of piglets being born and weaned from the Fast 276 females.
The excellent reuslts would not have be acheived with out the help of the amazing team pictured here.
The Lukes Brothers farm is a great example of how the genetic robustness and resiliency of the Fast 276 female can handle a disease challenge and quickly get back to good health and achieve industry leading productivity levels.
Congratulations to the Lukes Brothers on their excellent results this quarter!