7. The Pre-trial Work

In this chapter we adjust the business strategy, train staff, make silage and then the trial pigs arrived........

Although we needed only two or three people to run the trial, this was Papua New Guinea and more people, almost  by definition were required. Somehow we had to find work for the existing farm staff.  Desparate times,  desperate measures.  These measures came back to haunt us later. They cost us thousands of dollars.

The starting B4D -Farm Alstonia staff.
Back:  Miriam,Kedo, Isidor, Patrick,Joe
Front: Lester, Jerry, Paul, Nerius, Kuwaya

I adjusted the trial and business strategy and deployed a disease eradication plan for some remaining sows on the farm.  We kept about 40 middle parity sows to provide some cash flow and something for our staff to do while the trial was running and before the sows farrowed. We thought we might be able to eradicate mange ( a skin parasite) and Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae, an infectious respiratory pathogen.  I'd written  a book about this stuff.  Eradication of internal parasites might have been possible in an environment where pens could be spelled and disinfected but, in our pens, where some floors were dirt, elimination of roundworms was a pipe dream.

With a pressure washer we bought from Bunnings and shipped to Port Moresby, we cleaned the weaner house which was to become the trial house to within an inch of its life, and for the six months the 90 trial pigs were in those pens there was no evidence of round worms, mange nor serious enteric or respiratory disease.

Some of the kau kau from the market was mouldy

Before the trial started we bought 20 bags of kau kau (sweet potato) from highlanders trading in the local Gordon’s market.  The staff cut off the mouldy bits and chopped them up with the garden mulcher.  They shoveled the mulched kau kau into 200 Litre drums lined with food grade plastic bags, sprinkled a handful of salt on top optimistically to control mould and sealed them up with electrical ties. 

Using a garden mulcher to make silage from Kau Kau

Two weeks later we opened them up and fed the fermented kau kau to some sows first and then some young pigs.  These animals had never seen a diet like this before. The sows were quick to consume it.  The weaners quickly investigated the mix as it was put into their feed trough then once they tasted it piled in and cleaned up the allocation. 

We knew then that the challenge was for us to get the pigs to eat enough to achieve the same energy intakes as they would on the less bulky commercial diet.  It was a question of stomach size vs palatability and appetite.  

However, even if the small pigs couldn’t eat enough to optimise growth we thought that they would do well when they (and their stomachs) grew.

Weaner pigs:  Their first exposure to Kaukau silage
fermeneted for two weeks

The small number of weaned pigs coming through from the original sows that we had kept served us well.  Our staff practiced weighing them and measuring them so that when they had to do it for the trial pigs they were quite skilled.

Things were going well.  But in PNG this rarely lasts. Although OSL had advanced funds our staff weren’t getting paid.   Perhaps it was due to oversights in the accountant’s office, perhaps the accountant took leave without realizing he had not authorized payment of wages, perhaps the administration  manager was slow to get wages sheets in. For whatever reasons for the first few weeks of normal operations and for some periods later, staff weren’t paid.   Miriam was the office administration and accountancy manager.  Her reports are very much to the point.  She wrote:

"The first week of working under the new company brought a few challenges to the staff but this has not stop them from completing what needs to be done. The first challenge, the delay in wages, I for one thought there will be a strike from the staffs due to the delay in wages, but the staffs took the announcement on the 19/07/13 with understanding knowing that it’s the beginning of more challenges to come. I advise them to leave the matter to me and I would settle it before another weekend comes.” 

Eventually the funds to buy the pigs for the trial arrived.  It had been given the go ahead in January, but the check didn’t clear OSL’s administrative processes until August and then took two weeks to appear in our bank. And, just when we had that settled the garden mulcher that we were using to chop the kau kau died. Miriam wrote in her report: 

“There is currently a big hole on the side of the engine oil tank cause by metal that struck the tank as a result we cannot continue the crushing with the crusher until this is fixed.” 

It needed a new motor.  A relatively simple matter you would think but not in PNG.  It took some six weeks to get the problem diagnosed, the new engine selected, payment approved, check written, check delivered, check cleared, engine shipped from the retailer to the engineering business repairing the mulcher, quotes approved, engine installation completed, job cost approved, check requested, check written, check picked up and delivered and check cleared before the repaired mulcher could be returned to the farm. All these steps for two reasons.  The first, because of the record of bad debts in PNG it was important for payments to be secure.  We were a new company, and nobody knew us.  Secondly, we didn’t have our own vehicle.  None of our staff had a license. OSL had a vehicle for us but it was isolated by monsoon flooding in the Gulf of Papua and nobody could get it for a year. We did have access to one of Rimbink Pato’s vehicles and a driver, the thoroughly excellent Paul, at the going commercial rate and after his daily tasks were completed.

Stacking the first shipment of kau kau

Eventually the kau kau mulcher was returned to Farm Alstonia.  The kau kau, in 70 big 75 kg bags filled to the brim and delivered to the site amidst much excitement, was chopped, ensiled and left to ferment until we could start feeding, it in the first week of November – about a week or two late.

The pigs in the trial were all female crossbred large white landrace pigs.  They were six weeks old and drawn from the Boroma commercial farm near Port Moresby.  We wanted female pigs to reduce variation but also to keep after the experiment as future breeding stock. They were of an exceptionally high health status.

Trial pigs  six weeks old in a weaner pen before
allocation to their  treatment group the day of arrival 

Six pigs were randomly allocated to seven pens on each side of the shed using a random number 
generator.  Pens were also randomly allocated to control and treatment groups. There were three treatment groups and three control pens on each side of the shed.  The seventh pen on each side was randomly allocated but in case location adversely affected performance we were prepared to jettison those results.

The pigs were tagged and weighed on arrival. Heart girth and body length (base of the skull to base of the tail) were recorded.  Every fortnight, on the same day, the pigs were weighed.  Body dimensions were measured monthly.

Miriam, business administration manager
and weigher in chief

Patrick, a softly spoken diligent man, managed the farm operations and competently ran a happy ship. While he hated anything to do with formal reporting he conscientiously wrote down in his notebook his “to do list” that arose from regular meetings. His wife Miriam, a larger than life woman, managed the farm’s administration. She also supervised the weighing and recording routines.  Patrick came from East New Britain, Miriam from New Ireland. Isidor, who came from Feni Island, a small island off New Ireland looked after pigs and fed them each day.  He was my go-to man. He, Patrick, Nerius and Lester had an agricultural certificate from an educational institute in Rabaul under a Japanese funded program (OISCA)He was thoughtful and considered in his actions and in conversation.  I came to rely on him a great deal.  He was game enough to offer a contrary view.

Next..the trial results