EPISODE 2: No Turning Back - Josh Brockman

So, Josh, you talked a little bit there about, you know, downsizing from, you know, 200, maybe in the past having about 100 litters this time.

Obviously, some of that's maybe due to just workload and management.

But do you see there being an industry need in any way to kind of try to tighten that up? Was it pushed by any of that? Or are you just thinking mostly just for you guys at the farm, it makes life better and easier?

Right.

Now, you know what? I would never presume to answer for anybody else or this, that, and the other.

I think it's kind of like – so at the beginning, you know, we had – like I said, we started with that first summer having seven to ten sows and litters.

And then it just – it gradually grew.

And I've always been the mindset that I don't want to ever – I'm trying to think of the right way to word this, but I never want to have pigs that are born, that are there, that are in the nursery and the chipmunk coming through that I don't necessarily have a home for.

And so what I mean by that is that as I've always tried to be on the bottom side of, of my supply and demand.

So like the farm grew and then it just exploded when the boars kind of started coming along.

And, um, and when, um, things just kind of kept growing and it just, I don't know when I look up and I look around and it's like, Oh, we've got 200,000 where this, and it was fine and it worked well.

Um, and so a lot of it for us is just, we were, we were way overflowed on facility space.

We were way overflowed on, on manpower and time.

And so, yeah, I would say that the, the first reason of the downsize was just manageability from our end.

but I think also like from, from an industry standpoint, it's changed, it's changing.

You know, when we were first, first roll and like, man, I could not make enough $750 to $1,000 pigs, uh, or $1,500 pigs, whatever.

But also that was my, that was my high end too.

Like that, man, if you'd have told me I was going to sell a baby pig for, you know, above 15,000, I would have like laughed at you.

So, um, So that was, you know, that was kind of our deal.

And then, you know, this, the industry shifting from that, it seems like to me, at least from our standpoint, like those high end ones are very easy to sell.

And then the, honestly, the, the, the 300 to 750 sometimes are easier to sell, but that, that middle tier keeps becoming smaller.

That, that middle range is shrinking for whatever reason.

And maybe nobody else sees this.

Maybe it's just us, but yeah, So with that, we've tried to tighten down and really focus on having – shrinking, shrinking things down to having the exact sales that we need, uh, to make those that we feel like have a chance to be very, very elite and high end.

And, um, yeah, just the, the market of the middle has been, been interesting to me of, of, uh, of what they can, what they can do.