Monday, December 28, 2009

News you can use

Another beef recall, affecting mostly western states. E. Coli is present in beef, but the particularly lethal strain only occures (in any amount) in beef who are fed grain enough to acidify (lowers the PH) the rumen. If they fed these cows grass for a couple of weeks (restoring the PH of the rumen) there'd be almost no lethal E. Coli in the cows at slaughter. Heck, it would probably would raise the price of the beef. Just too bad the CAFO owners wouldn't see that increase, only the folks at the end of the line (stores, distributors, etc.) CAFO owners would just see even smaller profits. Kind of hard to fix a system that bankrupts the producer for making a better or safe product.

On a cheerier note, a couple of more little ones went off to thier new home today. Yep, still doling out the fall litters (Big Momma had her babies much later than everyone elses). The older "babies" are touching 80#-100# now. Now that's a "BigLet" (piglet, biglet, get it?). The rest sould be homebound in the next week or so.

Just in time for the fisrt 2010 farrowing in the newly redesigned (10 pen) farrowing pens. WoHoo!

Dave,

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Some stuff...

How about some memories of summer, fall and winter? Well I'm redesigning the pens for our January farrowing. They will farrow in huts outdoors, and I think all will be well. The very last of the (laready reserved) fall piglets will be leaving in the next few weeks, so we'll have smaller numbers on the farm for a couple of months.

Someday (maybe) I'll get these pigs on a breeding schedule. Probably next year, but no promises :)