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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