Fairmont, MN

"Vita Plus has such a knowledgeable, up-to-date, well-connected sales and nutrition staff. Because consultants are local, they are very easy to work with and they take good care of us.

We've gotten a lot of value by working with our Vita Plus consultant. mentor, alternative ingredient analysis and i-Production help with our feed budgeting and growth modeling. We can always depend on promptness for delivery of our products, diet changes and necessary information.

Vita Plus also offers us great networking and education opportunities. Swine Summit is one of the premier educational forums in the industry today."

Indiana

Swine and Animal Nutrition Division Manager

Scope: Northwind Pork finishes 120,000 pigs per year

Northwind Pork has recently gone over the 50,000 head mark (20,000 finished and 30,000 currently on feed) of pigs fed using the mentor program. Wean-to-finish feed conversions have averaged 2.44 for the last 20,000 head of closeouts. This is a solid tenth and a half improvement over the previous 20,000 head not on the mentor program. Even though herd health has improved dramatically over the last 8 months, I still feel that the mentor program has played a significant role in this improvement.

As intakes increase during the grow-finish cycle, it makes a tremendous amount of sense to me to change the diets every 7-10 days to help maximize performance and minimize cost. With the recent run-up in commodity prices Vita Plus's mentor program hit the market at the perfect time for us!

Iowa
Feed Budget Manager
Scope: Southeast Iowa Pork finishes 20,000 pigs per year

The mentor feed budgeting program has been a very valuable tool for Southeast Iowa Pork. mentor allows us the flexibility to vary delivery amounts, while automatically adjusting the budgeted diet amounts on the go. With that said, it still allows Southeast Iowa Pork to take full advantage of the 26 diets that the program selects from to minimize feed expense by not over feeding nutrients. mentor also lets you pick from different diet menus and enter our own ingredient pricing so you are able to evaluate different diets and get an estimated cost of gain and ingredient usage per group.

One option that I really like is that I can put in any starting and ending pig weight. mentor then generates a budget to follow. We have a variety of starting weights and I just punch in the weight and it generates the diet menu. mentor also allows us to change pig inventories along the way. This is important to me because when we overstock our wean-to-finish buildings, I am able to change the inventory when we thin the building, and the feed budget is adjusted. Another thing that is nice about mentor is it has an area for comments, which allows me to track the medication protocols or any other special instructions I need to note. The budgets can be archived and printed, which we always use as a checks and balances system when we generate close outs on a group; this is a valuable tool!

The mentor feed budgeting program has been a very user-friendly program. It does not take long to build a comfort level in operating it. I would recommend mentor to anyone who is serious about keeping a tight track of their feed budgets and feed expenses.

Minnesota
Swine Specialist
Scope: Ag Partners manages 60,000 finishing pigs

As I manage the production flows and feed budgets for 60,000 finishing pigs each year, I can really say mentor makes a difference. mentor helps manage a smoother feed budget, especially since I can recalculate the feed budget when delivery increments are different than what the budget originally called for. We are now feeding closer to the pigs' requirements because the feed budget is always adjusted. Also, set up is easy and the program is user friendly; its very simple to use.