A Predicament For Pigs...

Imagine being confined in a room with no way out and no bathroom.  The only food are slices of Wonder Bread thrown in a bin once a day and water that is dirty enough to be confused with tea.  You are also with bunch of other people, including siblings, for weeks and now months... that would be horrible (and you don't have a smart phone either).

That’s the situation that needs to be resolved for almost 100 pigs.  They have been confined in various paddocks which are now denuded of desirable forages (this pen used to have a nice sward).  Allowing the extinction of all the plants and grasses will also hinder future recovery of this area - the wind will send topsoil airborne and when the rains come even more topsoil will leave with surface run-off.

Some paddocks are in better condition but still damaged.  In addition to the poor conditions a confinement model fosters, this particular situation has been unsustainable from a business perspective - the feed costs have been considerable.  They've also only been fed cracked corn which offers too much energy (analogous to Wonder Bread) and insufficient quantities of other essential nutrients like protein.

No... this isn't tea.  Access to water and its quality is essential to ensuring a pig's health.  This trough was the cleanest.  In one paddock it appeared that the pigs weren't thirsty but that was only because the float mechanism was hindered by debris and didn't allow sufficient water to flow to where they drink from.

One quick solution for halting the "bleeding" (i.e., lower or eliminate the feed costs) and improve their diet is to provide left overs from meals, or restaurant scraps.  But the state dictates that feeding leftovers or restaurant food to pigs is against the law.  The claim is that pigs can get sick from the food you or I eat – this has been done since time immemorial with domesticated pigs with no problem, so what's the real issue?  I suspect if the research is done one will discover that the large pork producers lobbied for such a law because it is an abundant resource available to small producers which would greatly reduce their costs and impact the market share of the large producers – a topic for another post.

What’s the solution then?  I think we're going to allow pigs to be pigs, by converting this system to one that allows them to forage as they normally would (also should eventually cut down on labor hours).  Sounds simple, but to implement this it takes research and thought to design paddocks that facilitate livestock management while allowing them to consume what they’re designed to eat without creating a lunar surface everywhere they go.  Once implemented the goal is to cut feed costs 85%.

We opened a small portion of fresh pasture to see what they would do - would they graze or root, and how long will it last?

The condition of that same area five days later. As you can see, they graze.  They only begin to root once the forage on top is depleted.

We plan on posting our progress. We’ve set some initial goals for the next six months but in the time being there is a lot to think about (or meditate on, and yes, for those wondering we’ve scheduled an appointment for Sammy with the Oracle). Now on to other (kind of) unrelated things as usual.

Tried to take a short cut thru some temporary electrified wire.  Idea was to lay a few posts down and drive over them.  Usually works but this time one of the wires caught on a steering component.  I told Sammy not to touch the wires and to leave that for...

...Pippi, who eventually touched the wire and discovered it was "hot."  It's always nice when someone else confirms.  I've noticed that 5-6,000 volts causes adults to involuntarily shout expletives.