MEM
March 18th, 2005, 08:27 AM
(mods feel free to move this if this isn't the right place for it)
I recently went to go visit my dad down in Indiana. He lives in (and I grew up in) a very rural part of the state, know for corn, soy beans and hog production.
Many of my friends lived on hog farms, or near them, our school had one right next door (and you could smell it when the farmer was cleaning the barn), and I drove past them all the time without even thinking much about them. They were just part of the landscape.
But this time, for some reason, I started thinking about what I was actually seeing: As high a producing area as this place is, you don't actually see too many pigs running around. And when you do, it's usually the very, very small family farms that only have six-seven pigs at the most (raised for 4H or just for family consumption).
Of course the only other time you see any pigs is when they're loaded onto huge trucks and taken to the slaughter.
So where are the hogs? In long, windowless, air conditioned polebarns. There's small vents near the roof and a door on each end. Hog farmers constantly worry about the electricity going out during the summer, since these barns can get really hot, really fast.
These animals don't get to run around, and the only time they see actual sunlight is on the way to the slaughterhouse. What kind of life is that for anyone??
And from there I started thinking about pig intelligence. They can be eerily smart. Near human intelligence is what my father always told me. They can problem solve. They have got to be bored to tears in those barns.
I've lived around this type of thing since I was 11 and never thought about it before. It was weird to suddenly start thinking about it.
I recently went to go visit my dad down in Indiana. He lives in (and I grew up in) a very rural part of the state, know for corn, soy beans and hog production.
Many of my friends lived on hog farms, or near them, our school had one right next door (and you could smell it when the farmer was cleaning the barn), and I drove past them all the time without even thinking much about them. They were just part of the landscape.
But this time, for some reason, I started thinking about what I was actually seeing: As high a producing area as this place is, you don't actually see too many pigs running around. And when you do, it's usually the very, very small family farms that only have six-seven pigs at the most (raised for 4H or just for family consumption).
Of course the only other time you see any pigs is when they're loaded onto huge trucks and taken to the slaughter.
So where are the hogs? In long, windowless, air conditioned polebarns. There's small vents near the roof and a door on each end. Hog farmers constantly worry about the electricity going out during the summer, since these barns can get really hot, really fast.
These animals don't get to run around, and the only time they see actual sunlight is on the way to the slaughterhouse. What kind of life is that for anyone??
And from there I started thinking about pig intelligence. They can be eerily smart. Near human intelligence is what my father always told me. They can problem solve. They have got to be bored to tears in those barns.
I've lived around this type of thing since I was 11 and never thought about it before. It was weird to suddenly start thinking about it.