by admin on December 18, 2011
Last week I seized the opportunity of a dreary, rainy Wednesday morning to get some errands done. We’ve got an outside to-do list a mile long right now so I try to take advantage of those times when being outside is miserable to do those things that need to be done indoors — like shopping.
At one of the stores I visited the cashier and I started talking about the unseasonable weather we’re having and as we bantered about which is better snow or rain I mentioned that I operate a hog farm and the rain can be a source of a whole lot of extra work and hassle (though so can the snow, just for different reasons). Upon hearing this the cashier said what most people say when it’s muddy and they know you own swine: “I bet the pigs are loving it though! This is their kind of weather!”
But here’s the thing; it’s really not. Pigs don’t like mud, just because it’s mud. They like mud under certain circumstances because it helps them be more comfortable. When it’s not quite forty degrees and drizzly, cold mud isn’t more comfortable.
Pigs wallow in mud when it’s warm outside. Ours begin to seek out water and mud when the daytime temps reach about seventy-five and the sun is shining.
One of the reasons for this is swine don’t sweat. Pigs don’t perspire the way humans do so they must get themselves wet in order to benefit from evaporative cooling. The water in mud wets the skin and then cools as it evaporates off, much in the same way we’re cooled off on hot days by lounging in the pool or lake. In fact, our hogs are known to be quite appreciative of a freshly filled kiddie pool in their paddocks on extra hot days. Some summers when it has reached well into the hundreds we’ve frozen jugs full of water and then dropped them into the pools for the pigs to lay against and play with. For them getting wet is all about keeping cool.
The other reason for wallowing in mud is also loosely tied to the temperature by way of bugs. If you were to watch pigs wallowing in mud you’d probably notice that they toss and turn in the mud, coating most of their bodies in it. This is a hog’s natural bug repellent. As the mud dries it creates a protective coating over the skin that prevents biting bugs from making a meal out of the hog’s hide. When it’s cold outside biting bugs aren’t active so the protective coat isn’t needed.
If you were to come and observe our pigs on a wet day when the temperature is cool — like most of the days we experience in the spring and late fall — you’d actually see them avoiding getting muddy. In the cool season they choose to bed down on dry spots and in their straw filled huts. Cold and wet actually affects them much the same way it does us; making them uncomfortable. That’s why — like we showed you back in March — sacrifice areas are constantly being rebedded with fresh straw during the wet seasons.
by admin on December 15, 2011
We call this time, between one season and the next, our down time. And it is less busy than the beginning of spring, or the middle of summer, or the harried weeks of final fall harvesting, but ‘down’ isn’t exactly accurate. There is still, to put it lightly, much to be done and we thought you might like a sneak peek at how we’ll be spending the long, cold months ahead.
Planning – There is so much to be done during the growing season that we couldn’t possibly accomplish all of it without some extensive planning to back it up. Seed catalogs and reminders from suppliers started rolling in through the Mailbox and our email before Thanksgiving. Even though planting won’t begin in earnest until spring now is when we have to decide what we’ll be growing and how much of it we’ll need. Since the weather plays such a tremendous roll in the success of any given variety of vegetable this can make for an interesting guessing game. If we plan too much for the warm season and have another spring like last year — long, cold and wet — we could end up with a lot of crop failures. On the other hand, if we plan for a heavy cool-weather crop and the spring shoots quickly into summery temperatures as it sometimes does we could have failures there, too.
We also have to start looking ahead at demand for turkeys and geese — both as meat animals and as breeding stock for other farms — and get our rough hatching schedules down on paper. These are another interesting game of guessing and balancing as both geese and turkeys are seasonal breeders. We have to plan for what will work best for our farm’s demand and then hope that the birds breed at an optimum time for our schedule. And some years they just don’t cooperate.
Prepping – Once the planning is complete we start getting things ready for the busy months ahead. Seed starting supplies are gathered from storage, washed and readied; we’re on the hunt for more efficient CSA transport bags or baskets; we’ll start printing tags for next seasons batches of jams; nesting areas are prepped for the geese and hog breeding schedules are double checked to make sure we don’t have any sows farrowing in the coldest part of the year if we can help it; we cross reference our supplies with our projected needs for the year and fill any gaps.
Networking & Education – Community has long been an integral part of the success of agriculture and we think that’s more the case today than ever before. When we have a little extra time during the cold months we like to spend it catching up with fellow farmers, discovering interesting new ag initiatives and reading up on the latest developments for the industry.
Sustaining – Unfortunately, though the winter months tend to be quieter here, chores take longer to complete when they’re compounded by thigh deep snow, ice and below freezing temperatures. More bedding is required for the hogs to be comfortable and warm, water buckets must be de-iced and refilled regularly to keep all of the animals hydrated and eggs have to be collected several times a day to keep them from freezing and cracking right in the nest boxes. It almost takes more time just to sustain the farm in the winter months than it does to grow it in the spring, summer and fall.
