Farm 05/14/13
Today again, half of the group went to Annette Sweeney’s cattle farm and the other half went to the Friest’s hog barn. I was one of the students who went to the Friest’s hog barn. We left for the Friests later than the group that left for the Sweeneys, and spent the morning touring the hog barns, learning about the care of hogs, and artificially inseminating them.
On par with the safety precautions we had learned about with Professor Kevin Butt at Ellsworth Community College on Friday, we suited up in painters suits, breathing masks, and plastic booties to go into the hog barns. Although these barriers prevent us, the students, from coming into contact with any dangerous excretions, bacteria, or viruses that may come from the pigs, their main purpose is actually for the protection of the swine themselves. Although the pigs are big, sturdy animals, up to around 250 pounds at the time of slaughter, they get sick surprisingly easily. An illness can sweep through a hog barn and wipe out all of them with little trouble. This is also one of the reasons that hog barns from different farms are placed so far apart; so that the wind does not carry diseases from one barn to the next. In fact, when Scott, Dr. HN’s nephew, was planning on putting his hog barn in, the Friests asked that he move the building plan from a half mile from their barn to a location that was farther away. There is now a mile between the two barns, which prevents the pigs from sharing diseases between farms.
During our tour of the barns we learned that the Friests run a ‘farrow to finish’ farm, meaning that they breed the hogs and raise them from birth until they are sent to slaughter. To do this, there are different barns for each part of the project. We did not get to see a finishing barn, but we did see a farrowing barn, a wean barn, and the barn where the hogs are bred, and kept in gestation crates. In the farrowing barn we saw many tiny newborn piglets and even saw Mr. Friest both pull piglets right out of a sow, and castrate a little male piglet. Both sights were slightly traumatic, but the piglets didn’t seem to mind all that much, which was surprising. By far the strangest thing we did that day was artificially inseminate the hogs, it wasn’t as gross as I expected it to be, but it was still unpleasant.
One major controversy lately in the hog raising industry has been the use of gestation crates. These crates are metal, cage-like stalls, which keep the pigs separated from one another. Many animal advocates oppose these stalls because they are not large enough for the pig to turn around, only allowing it to move forward or back up in a very limited space. To someone with no knowledge of pigs, this may seem very cruel and indeed there has been a public outcry by many outside of the agriculture industry against the gestation crates in recent years. This outcry has lead some large restaurants chains to refuse to sell pork from hog farms using the gestation crates, because they are afraid of losing business if they continue to support farms that the public view as inhumane.
Although these gestation crates may seem cruel, when we were at the Iowa Pork Producers Association, we learned about a study that had proven that when given the choice between roaming free with other pigs, or laying alone in the stalls, most pigs chose the stalls. Why is that? Surprisingly pigs can be quite vicious to each other, they have been known to pick on each other sometimes until the weaker pig dies of stress. With this in mind, it is not surprising as to why both the Friests and many other hog farms use gestation crates. However, the refusal of restaurants to purchase these hogs has been devastating to many farmers who may not be able to afford to update their barns, or perhaps would not be able to afford the loss of pigs to stress if they did update. Although the restaurants are simply trying to stay in business, the outcry of the public is mostly the result of a lack of education, if it is good for both the farmers and the hogs, is it really so bad?