On 29/03/2015 4:47 AM, Christina Wahl wrote:




> "Your vet friend is not very bright."
>
>
> My friends are veterinary professors at Cornell.  I trust what they say.  Also, I supported my point with a reference detailing the challenges in maintaining a highly-bred dairy cow.

No doubt your vet friends are bright.  The point here is what happens to 
a cow, dairy or otherwise when she has to forage for herself.  So you 
ask a husbandman.


>    
> I'd like to see a 900-pound production hog farrow without a gestation crate.  Maybe it is possible.  Wild pigs can do it, but they are nothing like commercial production hogs.

Having kept pigs, I suspect that a sow will do fine when she can choose 
where to farrow.  In fact we used to farrow outside in large pens.  I 
cannot remember having one sow roll on any piglets in that environment. 
Farrowing crates are used because we provide poor places for her to farrow.

Geoff Manning

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