[1rudeboy]

That pig on the right is the weirdest I’ve seen.

[VanShuyten]

Sow stalls keep the piglets from getting crushed or eaten by the sows.

[rawhide]

Neat!

[bigbob]

Ag is becoming increasingly hi-tech, and that’s not to say only huge mega-farms and corporate owners can succeed. Small and mid-size agribusinessmen are thriving all over the midwest, and many of them have difficulty finding workers with needed hi-tech skills. Time to stop telling kids that college and big city life is the only alternative for a successful future.

[CGASMIA68]

Terrorist Nidal Hasan needs to be sentenced there for the remained of his life as a shackled laborer

[Balding_Eagle]

Sows getting too fat is one of the biggest problems for the gestation period. They have to be kept on a very ‘slim’ diet, otherwise they are too fat to have healthy piglets and have to be shipped to market.

A good healthy sow can have 10 or more litters with ease, an overfed one only one or two.

The can easily eat 15 pounds a day, but have to be limited to 3 to 5 pounds, depending on size, age, and how close to the due date they are.

With the new technology, as described here, it’s posible to do all that and more.

[RedMonqey]

This is an ploy to drive out small farmers. Such practices will be demanded by the Feds in the future.

Big Ag can afford to have IT guys on standby to fix/replace the electronic gizmos. Small farmers can’t and will bypass such laws and if get caught heavily fined.

Gestation stalls are there for a reason. It will take more than PCism to over come generations of tradition(al) sucess.

[RedMonqey]

In conservative, Republican Arizona, 61 percent of voters voted for the ban.

Which just proves the point that urban dwellers are ignoramuses on the subject of how their food is produced.

Good luck (and don't complain) with the higher prices, dolts!

[RedMonqey]

Peggy Pate, Johnson's sister, has two animal science degrees from the University of Illinois...... "I'm in the pens at least twice a day," she says

That's where there "educated idiot" syndrome comes in.

On what traditional farm can one spend additional time on one part of an farming operation without sacrificing other parts? Cows, chickens get neglected? fields not plowed/planted Machinery not serviced/repaired? Fences not mended?


How bout time withe the family?
Life on campus is reeeeeeeeeel cushy if you don't have to tend to all the "unglamorous" functions on a farm.

College professors of all fields need to get out in the real world

[Beagle8U]

What a wildly stupid article!

Putting sows in a gestation crate doesn't have a damn thing to do with sows fighting or with how much or little they eat.

They are put in the crate to keep the sow from laying on her pigs when they are born, and that is the only reason.

The sows are only put in the crates a couple days before giving birth and are in them for only a short time.

Without crates half or more of the baby pigs will be crushed by their mother when she lays down.