You folks who live in the south or on the east coast, or pretty much anywhere but the great white north, will think that I'm being silly and saying that repeated days over 90 are record heat, but there's only been 6 times since records were kept that it's happened around Seattle.
During the heat the pigs will go to the
automatic waterers and run them overtime, making a pool of water below them, and the water streams out into the pasture
The stream of water soon becomes a slow motion river of pigs. It looks like these pigs are going through rapids, surfing.
Pretty soon there's a logjam of pigs, each sow or boar carefully arranged to not quite touch the other pigs. the purpose here is to share the space, but not to share the heat. They want to be cool.
When you get it just right you'll see a sow dozing contentedly in the mud, no doubt dreaming of good things to eat.
I use this time to do a close examination of the pigs; walking over to them and looking at their heads and ears for any sign of parasites, their skin for wounds or lesions, and their overall condition. It's one of the few times that the entire herd will lay still for a while. Siesta.
Besides it being very hot back here on the east coast, we also have had a lack of rain too.Luckily, our well on our farm is a good one.
ReplyDeleteAre those Berkshire pigs?
ReplyDeleteit's hard to tell from the photo because they're loving their mud. The purebred berkshires have white feet and a white blaze on their forehead. In the first photo, the three hogs you can see in the center are purebred berks. I've also got purebread hampshires and two boars that are berk/hamp cross.
ReplyDelete