Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Ken Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets.
Ken Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets
Looking through your press release one of the things I saw that was - it seemed like you were a little bit less enthusiastic about the future, and I guess what surprises me is you don't really talk about the sow liquidation or the gilt liquidation. Can you talk about where you see that going and how that's going to influence the future for you, because it seems like that was a clear absence from your press release.
Larry Pope
Well, I was looking at sow liquidations here yesterday, Ken, and I think the last 21 weeks we had 15 weeks in which sow liquidations were north of 10%, five or six weeks when sow liquidations were well below 10%. It's a little fickle number, and it seems like whenever the corn markets drop a little bit or the hog market goes up, sow liquidation that week drops off. And we've had all these issues out there, as you may be aware of, of sows backing up and not being able to be processed.
I think it continues to be a positive. I hope we aren't - I hope through some of these grain moderations that some of those that were making decisions about whether to get out of this business or to reduce their sow herds don't give a second thought to that because we do need to control the supply.
I can assure you that the announcement that we made last February, where we're reducing our sows, that process continues and we have not wavered in that at all. So we're doing our share in terms of what we think needs to be done. I think the sow liquidation numbers continue to say the industry is liquidating, although you saw some numbers coming out of Canada didn't necessarily think the liquidation was occurring as fast and there wasn't as much take up of the government program, and so some of the numbers, the sow liquidations, don't necessarily translate into exactly the herds coming down by those numbers.
It's positive and I think it's correcting. I wish the numbers were bigger. How about that?
Ken Zaslow - BMO Capital Markets
Do you think that in 2009 calendar that you'll have less hogs supply? You still think it needs to be a more dramatic cut to get your hog production margins positive?
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