We live in a nation that has
been at war with its own working people for at least four decades now
through Democrat and Republican both. The victims have finally
caught on and that is what much of the upset and direct talk on both
sides of the current Presidential race is all about. People are
finally awake! The elite use a variety of methods, ranging from
automation and consolidation to winking at the people streaming
across the border to find work, then treating them worse than I treat
my animals as they use them to drive wages down. Or they rig the
game so the factory can move over the border. Or close the factory
up and hire a Chinese one. And have you noticed that with all this
easy movement of people there is still not a few foreign born and
trained dentists coming in to help control the price of crowning my
worn out teeth down from four figures? Ever wonder how that works? Dentists are evidently not allowed to cross the border.
We independent farmers, the few
of us that are left, have stubbornly gotten ourselves into the
situation where we can effect small, but potentially large changes by
starting right within our own farms. We are a strange breed, both
management and labor, and that gives us a certain freedom. What we
have done here at our farm as we needed to expand our hog production
to keep up with markets is to begin to take human needs into account
in the decision making.
Let me tell you about just one outcome of
that; the breeding and gestation areas. We need to keep about a
hundred sows to keep our new farrowing house in full production.
When we were deciding how to house and handle them, we knew a few
things thanks to our forty year history in the hog business. We knew
we wanted the herd to have access to a considerable quantity of
forage feeds-pastures in summer, quality hays in winter-as this has a
wonderful effect on milking and mothering ability. We knew we had to
be careful how we fed the grain part of the ration, as we aren't
interested in gestation crates and sows in a group can be pretty
savage when they fight over feed. We knew we needed three
gestating/breeding areas for our three group farrowing system, one
for replacements, and two for regular sow groups, plus another short
term holding area so the farrowing house could regularly be clear of
all hogs for cleaning. And most important, we saw that we had more
help coming, both in terms of the next generation so interested in
farming and the coming need to hire part time help for the business.
We saw early on that we could
readily offer pasture access to two groups at a time due to the
farm's layout so we decided that the replacements would be held off
pasture and fed hay year around instead. We split two standard
hoops-30X72-across the narrow middle and concreted them. We
designated one half hoop for feeding, the other three were for sow
housing. We also poured an apron outside each for sow water access
and manure handling. That done, we devised a set of lanes and
handling traps so that each of the sow groups could be allowed access
to the feeding area in its turn. The feeding area was equipped with
refurbished and modified gestation stalls. We narrowed them to
twenty inches to fit 18 of them in each of two rows, and modified the
back gates so they would function as feeding stalls. Each group of
thirty plus sows comes into the area three times per week for grain
feeding by means of a wheelbarrow and hand scoop on each feed alley,
a process that takes about three hours for the three groups. This
comes out to about one hour of work each feeding day plus two hours
time for the sows to eat the ration. The sows have forage, either
pasture or hay, available to them at all times. This practice
considerably moderates the tendency to fight and bite.
Now this setup lends itself to
scheduled AI or boar breeding in the feeding area, and that part
works pretty nicely as well. It also maximizes the “eye of the
master”, and this is critical to us.
Public radio regularly does a
farm report here in Minnesota. Whenever a hog disease is running
amok it will be about hog production. And when it is, it will
invariably feature the sow herd set up at the University research
center in Waseca, which uses a set of electronic sow feeders and not
the one in Morris, that is set up for hand feeding in feeding stalls
similar to our layout. Several times I have contacted them and
pointed out how the sow herd at Waseca features bitten and marked up
sows, a consequence of sows piling up to wait in front of the feeding
area for the computer to allow them in and dole out their ration for
the day. But nothing changes in the public radio's coverage. Now I
take this to be a sign of how firm a grasp technological
fundamentalism has on our imaginations, for this is a radio service
that caters to the levels of society that tend to worry a great deal
about animal treatment. Still the answer to any problem in
production is always more and more sophisticated technology.
Our system, by contrast,
maximizes the impact of human management, in part by strictly
controlling spending on technology. The stalls were bought at junk
price, modified and welded together in the shop in a day or two, then
installed. Feed tanks, feed scoops and wheelbarrows are all
available at the local farm/fleet store. But the human eye and
imagination? That is priceless. For us, the worker doing the
feeding is expected to check for heat in all groups at every feeding
and to know if that group of sows should or should not be bred. He
is to notice if any of the sows show up stiff or lame or do not come
to eat at all. Pregnancy checking by hand held machine is also done
here, as is observation for parasite load and general health and well
being. Sows are handled with a certain level of patience and respect
which does wonders for their attitude at farrowing. While each group
is eating its ration, the feeder can be doing general light
maintenance of the area as well as pasture observation in summer.
The feeder knows which sows eat slow and which gobble their feed. He
understands from his work a great deal about their personalities and
is able to link this knowledge with genetic differences to help with
breeding decisions.
Now I am sure that much of this
could be done in some fashion by computer. Ration eating could be
timed, body temps taken, general health “observed”. And I know
also that the usual approach to the next generation coming into a hog
business would be to double it and buy a few more computers, so that
every “manager” can have a screen to look at. I am just saying
that it is not always the best idea.
When we as farmers, or as
working Americans, or as citizens are content to have our lives so
divided into compartments that we cannot see over the wall dividing
“technology adoption” from worker under-and unemployment and
despair well enough to notice that the two are essentially one
problem in many ways, then it is difficult to see how we will ever
think and act our way out of the mess we are in. And I don't think
our politics will ever get clear headed and straightforward enough to
deal with issues like this, until we who operate the systems do.
