Howdy Neighbors!
We’re the Springer’s - Michael, Christy, Mason and
Cooper. We live in rural Neodesha just
twelve miles from Mrs. Piatt’s classroom.
We are third generation farmers.
We farm with Michael’s grandparents, his parents and his aunt and
uncle. On our farm we raise wheat, corn,
soybeans and lots of pigs! We are a
farrow to finish hog farm. That means
the piglets are born here and they live here until they are sent to
market.
We had a great time hosting Flat Aggie. Flat Aggie’s visit started out a bit chilly. The top pictures were taken on February 4 and
the bottom pictures were taken on February 16.
Wow, a lot can happen in 12 days!
As you can see we live right next to the hog farm. Yep, we drink the same water and breathe the
same air as our piggies. On our farm, our
piggies are raised in modern hog barns, that means we raise them inside. The piggies were sure happy that they were
all nice and warm inside the building when the temperature outside was a negative
number. By raising them inside, we also
protect them from the hot summer sun and animal predators. The barns stay 65 degrees all year
around. Did you know that pigs don’t
sweat? Nope, they do not have sweat
glands. We keep them cool all summer
long by having misters in our barns.
Those covers on the outside of the building are called curtains. The controller in the picture below will
automatically raise and lower the curtains according to the temperature on the
inside of the barns.
Aggie’s first responsibility was to help Mason (left) and
Cooper (right) feed their calves. Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail shall keep us
from making sure our animals are properly taken care of. Did you know that farmers do not get sick
days or holidays? Normally, the boys
feed their calves before and after school, but on this day, they were out of
school for a “snow day”! Cooper’s calf
is named “Meatball” and Mason’s calf is named “Patty”. Aggie was thankful that we had gotten her
some bib overalls, boots and a hat to wear because we were in the negative
temps that day!
We even sneaked in time for
some sledding fun!
This little piggy is kind of
shy.
A momma pig is called a
sow. A sow is pregnant 3 months, 3
weeks, 3 days (113 days). The average
litter size for a sow is 11 piglets. How
much did you weigh when you were born?
Well, the average piglet weighs around 3 lbs. when they are born. Flat Aggie did not want to get too close and
wake them up, that’s why you can’t see her.
They are lying under a heat lamp and the other on an orange heating mat to
stay warm. These piglets are only a few
days old.
Paperwork! Aggie could not believe the amount of
paperwork that hog farmers have! The
picture on the right is a “sow card”. It
tells us all about the momma sow and her piglets. The card on the right keeps track of the
sow’s feedings. The momma sow eats
breakfast, lunch and dinner just like you!
This pig is around 2 weeks
old. This is when they are given feed
pellets for the first time. When piglets
are twenty-one days old, they are weaned from their momma. They are then moved to what we call the
nursery. The piglets weigh around 15
lbs. when they enter the nursery. They
will stay in the nursery for 6-8 weeks and leave weighing around 60 lbs. This is when they are moved into the
finisher.
This bus is just one of the
many ways we move pigs around our farm.
We call it the “Ham Tram”. It’s
just like the bus you take to school, only it has no seats but it does have a
slide! Don’t you wish your bus had a
slide?
Inside the bus we keep the pigs
in separate compartments while we move them from farm to farm. Flat Aggie had so much fun sliding down the
slide with the piglets. There is always
someone at the bottom of the slide catching the piggies. Why do we use a slide to get the piggies out
of the bus? We found that we can move
them faster into the nursery building this way making sure they stay warm.
This is another way we move
pigs around the farm. This is called a
hog cart and is raises and lowers so the pigs can get on and off. It also has a scale on it so we can weigh the
piggies. Flat Aggie still prefers the
bus with the slide!
This pig is getting a drink of water. This is called a swing waterer. Sometimes the pigs can get ornery and spray
water everywhere. Today Flat Aggie
visited the finisher. This is where the
pigs live until they are ready to go to market.
Every day we walk through the rooms of every barn to check our
pigs. Keeping our pigs healthy is our
top priority. We also check and make
sure that they have plenty of food and water and that everything is working
properly in the barn.
How old and how big is a pig when it is ready to go to
market? It is around 6 months old and
weighs 270-280 lbs. In the middle
picture Michael and Aggie are marking the pigs that are big enough to go to
market with blue animal marker paint.
This lets everyone on the farm know which pigs to get out of the pen and
load on the semi-trailer to go to market in the morning.
See those slats in the floor in the picture on the
right? That is where the pig’s poop
goes. Did you know that farmers are the
original recyclers? That’s right! We grow the crops (corn, wheat, soybeans) to
make the feed for the pigs. Then, we use
the poop from the pigs to fertilize the fields to grow more crops to feed for
our pigs!
Aggie had fun riding around in
the feed truck delivering feed to all the different barns. Do any of you take vitamins? Did you know our pigs take vitamins too? Yep, their diets (feed) are actually designed
for them by the swine nutrition department at Kansas State University. We take the corn that we grow, add vitamins
and minerals and put it into a giant blender (feed mill). It then gets ground up all together, travels
up a big auger and goes into the overhead loading bins (above truck) and then
put into the feed truck and delivered to the hog barns. Each hog barn has their own feed bin. That computer (middle) tells the control box
(right) which feed to make. It helps us
keep track of ingredients (inventory) as well.
Power washing.
This is a very messy but very important job on the farm. Aggie says there is a lot of power washing
that goes on around the farm. After a
hog barn or trailer has had pigs in it, it is then washed, disinfected,
repaired if needed and then prepared for the next load of pigs.
Thanks for letting Flat Aggie hang out with us on the hog
farm! Make sure you keep eating that
sausage, ham, pork chops, ribs and of course… BACON!
Love, the Springer’s
Be sure to check out the Pig Farmer Math problems, too!
No comments:
Post a Comment
I would love to hear what you think. Leave me a comment.