FARMER FOCUS: Pig breeds suited to outdoor conditions
The weather is glorious, isn’t it? One of the most frequent questions I am asked is: “How are your pigs coping in this weather?”
I imagine this is because our weather is always so extreme – a few months ago we had relentless rain and now we have a heatwave.
And my answer, no matter what the condition, is always the same – the pigs are absolutely fine. The breeds we use and our equipment and procedures are all selected to ensure that our pigs are comfortable come rain or shine. Unfortunately this is not always the case for the staff – we cannot select hardier breeds of workers to join our team, but saying that, through a system that I will call “survival of the fittest”, the best workers and the ones that are equipped with the right attributes and attitude to work in these conditions are definitely the ones that remain with us through these extremes.
The winter just gone (which seemed to last for at least a year), certainly sorted the men from the boys, and now, coming into summer, these men are reaping the benefits of having a job outside while the majority of the working population are in offices, wishing they were outside.
It has been a tough year, with more straw used than ever before. Our team are finally able to take a break from the constant bedding requirements with this glorious sunshine, or the bowering around with the water tank because pipes are frozen. Now they have to focus on bowering around to make wallows so our pigs can keep cool, and check the farrowing huts to remove excess straw if mum decides to go a little crazy with her nesting instincts.
So no matter what the conditions, staff are always having to graft – just in a different way, dependent on the weather. Having been showing customers around our units in ridiculous temperatures lately, I’m feeling rather like an old sow myself in my 38th week of pregnancy. Watching them all wallowing in the mud, being so well looked after by our dedicated team, my decision has been made – in my next life I am coming back as a pig.
Anna Longthorp runs Anna’s Happy Trotters, a pork wholesale business supplying butchers, restaurants and farm shops with free-range pork from her family’s 2,100 breeding sows
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