Quote:
Originally Posted by missourimary
I enjoy it... and would eat it more if it wasn't so expensive.
Several people in my extended family raised hogs... they are no worse than chickens for smell and filth, IMO, though free range chickens might be better. But they do smell awful!  |
That's the problem a lot of folks see in hog pens. My grandfather raised hogs off and on. Don't know why he did it sporadically, but he never raised them for sale. I think it was probably just whenever someone offered a couple up for next to nothing.
Hogs evolved in climates that caused them to develop behaviors of wallowing in mud to protect themselves from the sun and insects the way hippos and elephants do. When they are deprived of that mud wallow they will roll around in whatever is available including their own feces.
They will also root around in their own waste for bits of undigested corn and whatnot. They way to discourage this behavior is to keep them in larger pens or even pasture like areas where they can find their mud wallow free from their own wastes and can root around under pine and nut trees.
Keeping them in pens and then expecting them to behave like cattle is unrealistic and probably evidence that their care givers aren't too familiar with animal behavior and evolution. Or, that they don't mind what the pigs don't appear to mind too much either.
Linear Mode
