Business
Kirk Swanson has raised hogs since age 7. After nearly 50 years in the business, he is now known for his super-star sow power and for raising an industry-changing sire, Hillbilly Bone.
During the last three to four decades Swanson has built his sow herd on the principles of structural correctness, durability, ease to work with and good maternal characteristics that make productive females to maintain and productive in the crate.
“Some of the depth and consistency you get out of a herd, happened in the last two or three decades not the last two or three years,” he says.
Swanson has worked to breed the same type of sow generation after generation, and through this strategic plan and divine intervention, he says is how he created a top crossbred sire.
Swanson, along with his wife, Jerra, their son, Daniel, and Swanson’s brothers, Kent and Kevin, have built 4K Farms in Red Oak, Iowa. They run 150 sows, produce show pigs and manage a “little” boar stud according to Swanson.
Thirty years ago, Swanson sought out an industry veteran to learn more about line breeding. Al Christian, now retired manager of the swine teaching farm at Iowa State University, told him there were two ways to line breed. One is to utilize genotype, using the same genes with the goal of trying to accomplish a homozygous gene pairing. The other way is to have an ideal model in mind then accurately select for those characteristics through generations that meet that model. This is how you will truly line breed for type, Christian told Swanson.
“Christian said if the selection pressures and the model in your mind are the right ideal, other generations may not have the same breeding,” he says. “They may be crossbred but you can get line breeding effects while line breeding that type generation after generation.”
In 2011, Swanson invited Christian to 4K Farms for a tour. Swanson led him through a 500-head finishing building that displayed the first crop of Hillbilly Bone pigs. As Christian walked through the second room, he turned on his heel and asked Swanson, “Two-thirds of these pigs are out of that young boar; how’d you get this kind of consistency out of a crossbred?”
Swanson told Christian he had a mentor, waited a second or two then said that mentor was Christian.
“Al, you gave me the recipe,” Swanson says. “I was blessed with mentors like yourself and others and made me realize the importance of selection for a heavy structured and wide sprung, correct skeleton animal, which results in maintaining productive characteristics.”
Christian explained to Swanson that line breeding for type would give him the same type of heaviness, structure and angles.
“I knew we created a pretty unique sire with Hillbilly Bone, but those components were still true,” Swanson says. “Then I watched Al’s eyes light up like a Christmas tree. We both had chills and started smiling from ear to ear.”
Swanson says one of the most important things breeders should realize is that when working with genetics it’s easy to want to breed to something new and trendy. He says a breeder should decide what a model sow looks like then work to create her and keep making duplicates.
“Another valuable lesson Al taught me is that the hardest things to obtain and easiest to lose in any species is heaviness, width and correctness of structure,” he says. “I’ve applied a mental concept I call the drag of the race, to try and accomplish those characteristics is like trying to paddle upstream in a canoe. One of the interesting things with swine is that we know what hogs would look like with no selection pressure and random breeding, they would look like a feral hog. When you do not have a selection pressure for width and heaviness of structure it’s much like turning a canoe around and going downstream.”
Swanson advises those getting started to find a breeder with a program in place that selects for the type of hog they like, and find out what females have been the most influential sows they’ve bred around. Then buy those sows’ daughters.
4K Farms is built on traits that Swanson says are timeless. He says he can look back 20 years at photos of his herd’s foundation sows and still see his model sow in the picture. Swanson says the lesson Al Christian told him in the mid-1980s about intense line breeding has held true.
“Another common denominator in a successful breeding program of any species is when you truly select for sound, productive and efficient animals that can easily reproduce – those animals are timeless,” he says.
Swanson is content when he looks at his pens of sows and can see consistency, correctness and productivity. These traits are the result of generations of diligence in a breeding program.
“One of the true joys I’ve had in life is to look over my replacement gilts and have the satisfaction that we’ve hit those selection targets accurately,” he says.