About the Guests
Mark D. Rix
Mark graduated from Iowa State University in 1973 and went to work for Wilson Foods in Oklahoma City for 6 years.
Mark joined Purina Mills in 1979 as a salesman in Nebraska and became a Swine Consultant in 1984. He then moved to North Carolina for Purina Mills as Swine Business Manager in 1988.
Mark moved to Fremont, Nebraska in 1994 and helped build Swine Management Services into a full line management company that built 40 sow farms and managed 80,000 sows.
Ron Ketchem and Mark purchased the consulting and intellectual property of Swine Management Services from Purina Mills (Land O Lakes) in 2002 and grew it into the leading independent swine consulting company providing “information solutions” to the swine industry through state-of-the-art benchmarking and analysis programs.
Mark has been married to Carolyn for 48 years and they have two children.
Nicole Boettger
Nicole has been with MetaFarms since January 2023 serving as Director of North American Swine. She brings 35 years of experience and relationships along with industry knowledge to the sales and marketing team. Before joining MetaFarms, she held sales and marketing roles in the feed, pharma, and pork industry associations (MN Pork and National Pork Board). She also taught Ag Education right out of college. Nicole grew up on a crop and swine farm in Southern MN and owns a contract finishing site. She holds production degrees from the University of MN and an Ag Education Degree from South Dakota State University. When not at work she enjoys training her Labrador Retrievers for field trial hunting competitions and cheering on the Jackrabbits.
Ron Ketchem
Ron Ketchem graduated from the University of Missouri in 1973 with a BS in Animal Science and master studies in Reproductive Physiology and Animal Breeding. He worked 12 years for a genetic company in production, sales, and marketing and developed their AI program. He then spent 15 years in Indiana with a major feed company as a Swine Consultant providing technical support and training. Ron later purchased Swine Management Services, LLC in August 2002 with Mark Rix. SMS was sold on September 30, 2019 to MetaFarms, a sow record-keeping company in Minnesota. Today, Ron consults with over 400,000 sows in the US, Canada, and Australia. Ron has been married to his wife Pam for 36 years and has 3 grown sons.
What can you expect to learn from this episode of Popular Pig?
- How SMS transformed small sow farms into efficient finishing operations.
- The importance of meticulous planning to keep farm projects on budget.
- How benchmarking with standardized data drove farm improvements.
- The effectiveness of using visual tools to make complex farm data understandable.
