Swine Farm

Pigs. The closest I have ever been to one was my fetal pig dissection senior year, and that was all fine a good partially because they were small and partially because they were also dead.

However, when I received and email saying that I was expected at the Auburn Swine Extension at 9am on Monday morning to move pigs from the nursery to the finishing floor, all I could think of was Mike Rowe in that episode of Dirty Jobs:

Besides the fact that the pigs make that god awful noise, the process of moving them was very unlike what was shown in that Dirty Jobs episode.
I arrived at the Auburn Swine Unit at about 8:55, dressed in full barn attire: boots, jeans, flannel shirt, and I must say, I was extremely proud of myself for dressing the part. However, after entering the office and meeting Brian Anderson, who would serve as our supervisor for the day, we were quickly told that we would need to loose everything we wore into the facility.
I suppose in response to the swine flu outbreak, the entry and exit policies of the facility have been heightened. By this I mean, we are required to leave everything we brought with us to the facility on the outside. After stripping down, we had to shower off and put on scrubs, socks, bras, some very unflattering underwear, and even hair bands provided by the facility.
Once we were dressed and ready to go, Brian briefed us about our task for the day: moving pigs from the nursery to the finishing floor.
When a pig is born, this process is called farrowing, it stays with its mother and its litter of 10-12 piglets for about 3 weeks or until it is weaned in a separate barn. Here they grow to about 10-12 pounds. From there they are moved to the nursery, away from their mothers.
In the nursery there are square pens lined up next to each other running down both walls with a walkway between the two sides. The floors are concrete and the pens have a rubber mat in the bottom of them. Hanging from the ceiling are temperature meters, one at the front and one at the back of the barn. The temperature is averaged and if the barn becomes too hot the fans are automatically turned on. Food and water troughs, which are filled through an automatic feeding system are also present in the pens. Pigs stay in the nursery for about 7 weeks, or until they reach about 50 pounds, at which time they are moved to the finishing floor. This is where I come in.

Before entering the barn, Brian handed me a clipboard with numbers and highlighted rows. I learned that each row stood for a specific pig, listed by gender, weight, ear notchings, and other information. The ear notching system was both interesting and extremely confusing to me. Pigs ears are notched in specific places, and based on these notchings the owners can derive what number the pig is.

For instance, we had to select all the pigs highlighted in blue on the chart, for a specific buyer. I would call out a number such as "7510" and Brian would scan the pen and pick out that individual pig. I have no idea how he managed to select each individual pig so quickly, especially with them squealing and jumping over each other, making a big fuss. I guess I will learn a little more about this system in my Animal Science 1000 course, but I am not looking forward to it!

After we would select each group, usually about 10-15 pigs, we would herd them toward the scale. I learned quickly that pigs want to go the opposite direction as you, so if I wanted them to go right I would have to come at them from the left. But these animals are not like cows or sheep where they will just blindly follow one another, they are smart and stubborn.

Using a large plastic board with handles I would herd them toward the scale. This is sometimes slow and frustrating, but it depends on each group of pigs. Some moved quickly with minimal pushing and shoving and some just refused to move. Among the most ornery of the groups were the all female groups. I suppose it was because they were self conscious of their weight, because they refused to get on the scale, screaming and throwing a fit every step of the way.

Once on the scale Brian would weigh them as a group and then record the average weight of the group. Over the course of the day we weighed nearly 3,000 pounds of pig.

From the scale we would move them to the finishing floor. I had heard that pigs were very intelligent animals, just after dogs, and they really are. They are curious little things. They want to smell and explore everything. For instance, there happened to be a garden hose on the way to the finishing floor, and every time we would walk past it, it would take about 10 minutes to move the pigs away from the hose. They wanted to sniff it, bite it, and even occasionally get tangled up in it. It is obvious from the little time I spent around them that they like to gather information about their environment with all of their senses.

We continued for about 2 hours, moving pigs from the nursery to the finishing floor, finally completing our task at around 11:30.

We signed out and showered out (thank god for the shower out because swine stench tends to seep into your pores), and said goodbye to the swine farm for now. Even though I am sore, bruised, and still smell slightly of pig, I had a great time at Auburn's Swine facility, and I cannot wait to go back again!