The Cull Breeding Swine Program was set up to reduce the national breeding herd to help deal with the economic hardship faced by Canadian swine producers as the result of low hog prices, escalating feed costs and the impact of the strong Canadian dollar.

To qualify producers must agree to depopulate at least one breeding barn and leave that barn empty of breeding stock for a minimum of three years.

Saskatchewan Pork development Board policy analyst Mark Ferguson says, at this point, it's unclear how strong the demand will be so producers should apply as early as possible.

Mark Ferguson-Saskatchewan Pork development Board

The federal government put a limit of 50 million dollars on the funding available for the program and, once that runs out, we've had the indication that there won't be anything else so the program is essentially on a first come first served basis and on Monday the 14 when the applications are available we would stress that producers get those applications in as soon as they can and we'll do our best to send them out to producers as soon as we have them.

We believe there'll be quite a few sows that will be part of the program that have already been marketed prior to the 14th of April but going forward we're just not sure.

The situation is changing daily given the market conditions.

And it just depends on what happens in the next month with prices and feed costs.

That will determine how many producers we have.

Ferguson notes Sask Pork is working with several provincially inspected plants and the Canadian Pork Council to organize slaughter options.

He says the goal is to line up one or two central slaughter facilities and there's also the option of on-farm euthanization for some producers.

He says, once the disposal options have been determined they'll be communicated to participating producers.