Cost and husbandry

One thing that factory farms have a very good handle on is expense. They typically know down to the nickel how much things cost. As a result, if you want to raise animals with the least amount of expense, in my opinion you'll inevitably head down that factory farm route.


What I wrestle with myself is how much of the proven techniques to use. Farrowing crates are a good example. Farrowing crates are used to confine the sow at time of birth until weaning.

No part of a farrowing crate is easier than a pastured pig. On pasture the pigs roam around, get their own food and water, and you can have a single giant feeder that holds a ton or two of food at a time -- so you only have to feed the pigs every other week or every third week.

With a farrowing crate there's quite a bit more labor. You're having to check food and water daily; the feeder is smaller, and needs to be filled more often. Because of the confinement you'll need to clean the area under the crate often, or put it up on grating so that the waste drops through.

Why go to all this trouble?
That's a whole litter I lost because the sow chose to have her litter in icy mud. She had a clean shelter with hay in it that I'd set up and gotten her into, but she rooted out of it and went to a corner of the pasture and I got a bucket of dead piglets. That sucked a lot.

If they make it out alive, there's a risk that they'll be squished by mom rolling over on them, stepped on (breaking their legs) or just wander out of the immediate area of mom. Last month I had an eagle take a newborn piglet. The world is pretty rough on piglets.

So in the interest of saving pigs, I'm going to adopt farrowing pens this year, for at least the first couple of weeks of the pigs lives. Other producers claim to be able to have lower losses than mine -- but I'm a little skeptical. For myself, I'd rather save their lives than hold that farrowing crates are inhumane.

A farrowing crate is only used at birth, and immediately after while the piglets nurse. It is not a gestation crate, which I believe are inhumane.

Farrowing crates and the red and black pig

This is the red-and-black pig. That's her name. She's about 18 months old, and was born on my farm. She's had one litter before, and weaned all of her live births. Well, I should back up and explain that.

Farrowing defined
When a pig gives birth, "farrows", there are three possible outcomes for each piglet. A live, healthy piglet is the most common, but sometimes the piglets die at birth or very soon after, which is the second possible outcome, or they died sometime prior to birth, which is the third.

Three possible piglet outcomes
So when a pig farrows, you usually only count the live births. The other two types get quietly disposed of. The sow will typically eat the afterbirth, but will not eat the piglets, so you have to go and get them and take them away. Even the most protective sows do not seem to notice when you take a dead piglet away.

"Birth Vs Weaned"
After birth, the next interesting time for a farmer is how many pigs a sow weans. That is, how many pigs survived until they're old enough to eat food and make a go of it on their own. That's "weaned". So when I talk to another farmer about my sow, I'll say "She had 13 and weaned 11", which may mean that she actually produced 16, only 13 of which lived, and that 2 more died at some point before they were weaned. But we don't talk about the 3. It's considered normal to lose a few. The two that were born live but died can be from a variety of causes. Predators, mom squashing them if she lays down too fast, someone stepped on them, some sort of birth defect that eventually kills them (like being born with no anus... happens.) or sometimes it's a result of the farmer (me) having some sort of accident. It happens. I try my best, but from time to time I kill a pig before its time.

Farrowing Crates
So this winter has been pretty tough. Its been wet, and very cold, and we flooded. We lost two complete litters of piglets. The main reason we lost them was to the cold, and I've been thinking about that a lot. I hate to lose the piglets, and so do the sows. So for the red-and-black pig I'm going to build and use a farrowing pen. It's a traditional pen that is used just prior to the sow giving birth. It allows the sow to stand up, and lay down, but not to turn around. I know, this sounds terrible, but it's only for one week, and it's to save the piglets lives.

Creep area
When the sow is kept in an area, her piglets can move around her with a much reduced chance of being stepped on, or squished. I can also improve their survival by putting in warm bedding (hay, in my case) and heat lamps so that they have warm spots to go to. I can't do that if mom can get to the heat lamps because she'll eat them. In the summer, mom's body heat is good enough, but in the winter, I think they need more help. The creep area is the area that is fenced off around the farrowing crate that is reserved for the piglets.