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Slaughter hogs are herded to a set of scales where they will be weighed and sold Tuesdsay at the St. Joseph Stockyards.

Living high on the hog isn’t as easy as it used to be.

For the guys who raise the hogs, it’s even harder.

A combination of high feed costs and low market prices has driven producers into the red. Many hog farmers lost close to $30 per head through the winter, but a seasonal rise in prices has brought producers closer to the break-even point.

The high prices made Dale Akey feel better about bringing a load of hogs to the St. Joseph Stockyards on Wednesday.

“We just sort of rode the storm out and tried not to sell if we didn’t have to. When they get too big, though, you have to sell,” Mr. Akey said.

Mr. Akey raises about 500 hogs on his farm near Cameron, Mo. He also grows corn, which softens the financial blow that expensive feed can inflict on produces that don’t have access to free grain.

“If we didn’t have our own corn, it would be really tough,” Mr. Akey said. “Still, it would make more money if we sold our corn through the market instead of feeding it through hogs.”

Small producers generally suffer the most from a rough market. Even large companies like Triumph Foods — which is producer-owned — are not immune to dips in the market.

Patt Lilly, chief administrative officer for Triumph, explained the effects low hog prices have on both the production and processing ends of the pork industry.

Most of the company’s producers are large and financially stable, Mr. Lilly said, but smaller farms sell to Triumph as well. If hog prices remain too low for too long, some of the smaller producers may face financial trouble or even go out of business.

“We have a certain fixed cost as a company from maintenance, wages and so on,” Mr. Lilly said. “It’s all a matter of throughput. We have to find somewhere to get the 18,000 to 19,000 hogs per day that we run through our facility.”

Meanwhile, the same low hog prices that stress Triumph’s producers give the company a better profit margin on the retail product it markets through Seaboard Foods.

Prices have taken a larger-than-expected leap this spring, narrowing profit margins for packers while helping out producers. Hogs that averaged $35 per hundredweight in mid-March now sell for around $58. Chris Hurt, an economist for Purdue University, explained in a recent article the significance of the price jump. The average seasonal price increase was $11 in the past five years. Mr. Hurt described the $23 boost this spring as “a miracle.”

The weekly hog report from University of Missouri economists Ron Plain and Glen Grimes attributed the prices to a strong export market. China is buying an especially large share of American pork, but the export market is strong enough that it would show a 17 percent increase so far in 2008 even if all sales to China and Hong Kong were excluded, the report said.

Local producers like Mr. Akey don’t ask too many questions about the increasing prices. If the market puts hog farmers back in the black, they’ll take the price.

“We’ve made money on hogs and they have been good to us,” Mr. Akey said. “We’ll probably continue to raise hogs as long as we’re on the farm.”

Agribusiness reporter Clinton Thomas can be reached at clintonthomas@npgco.com.