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5 Things I Learned the Hard Way While Raising Pigs – Modern Farmer

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5 Things I Learned the Hard Way While Raising Pigs – Modern Farmer

My farm vet dissuaded me from purchasing a boar to start my herd by sharing horror stories about their razor sharp tusks and unpredictable nature. He said he’d personally rescued a guy from being trampled to death by an angry boar. So I decided to start with a sow. A pregnant sow. Ms. Piggie, as I named her, was a chocolate brown duroc-Yorkshire mix, with a mane of black hair running down her back. She was beautiful, all 350 pounds of her. This may sound strange, but I think pigs have the most human-like face of any animal – if you discount the snout and focus on the eyes, you’ll see what I mean. Ms. Piggie had these incredible eyelashes, just like Jim Henson’s muppet. The economics sounded promising: Pigs average about 10 babies per litter, so for the price of a few weaners I would end up with 10 pigs, plus a mama that I could breed again the next year, and the next, and the next. As with my goats, I would just rent a boar when the time came. That day never arrived, however, as my time as a pig farmer lasted just one stressful year. Here’s a few of the lessons I learned along the way.

Farm Land by New York State County in 2021

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Montgomery County is a classic example of an MAUP ... it's almost drawn to capture all of the agricultural areas along the Mohawk Valley without the hills and poorer soils of surrounding counties. Probably this was done historically not by accident.

Farm Land by New York State County in 2021

Map: Green Mountain National Forest North

Pig Tractor

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Apparently there is a lot of videos about different ways you can build pig tractors to till up and fertilize your land using hogs while not spending a shit load of energy and effort shoveling and hauling hog crap. Neat stuff, as you can always use more organic matter on your land, plus, well bacon.

Map: North Lake Reservior
SVGZ Graphic: Number of Dollar Generals in Each County

Well shit, we are full of it!

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Although repulsive to consider, the truth is we’re constantly consuming food that’s laced with traces of feces, mostly from other humans. As soon as you accept that reality, you will realize that proper hygiene is the key to food safety.

~ From Butchering Poultry, Rabbit, Lamb, Goat and Pork by Adam Danforth

SVGZ Graphic: BMI of Americans

Socially Defined Context of Smell

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It’s often funny how much of our world is defined by socially learned context of smell. 👃🏽 A lot of babies eat poop, they aren’t all horrified by smell of their own poop — at least until they’re yelled out by the mom and told gross.

Non-farm people think honeywagons spreading manure really stink, 💩 mainly because their parents told them poop is nasty, and hydrogen sulfide tickles their nose in the wrong way. Farm people might instead joke, it’s the smell of money — maybe pungent but it’s the best stuff to make the crops grow really well and provide the chance of passing a profit or at least surviving. After a while, manure becomes almost unnoticeable or at least not very pungent to those who live out in the country.

Smell is very much part of our lives, 🌽 and so much of it is based on what we think is good or bad. Silage smells wonderful to farmers, as they know it will make for healthy cows and livestock that produce a lot of milk and meat. As does fresh cut hay and other crops. Non-farm people might smell the same thing and either have a negative impression or a neutral impression.

Whether it’s sewage treatment plant, the landfill, the barnyard, 🐄 so much of it based on our context and our experience. When you learn that smell isn’t natural but based on the context you give to things, it will give you a totally different way of looking at things — not based on whether or not something is pungent but what the real impacts of human activity are.