Sunday, February 9, 2014

Pigs: A Few Facts Concerning These Animals

By Lianne Derocco


An important source of food the world over is pork sourced from swine, making swine farming popular. It is important to note that all parts of the pig can be used to make various pork products, such as bacon, ham, sausage and other edibles. Some interesting information about pigs and hogs is stated below.

We hear the words hog, pig, sow and swine sometimes used interchangeably, but each word has a special meaning. A swine is simply a domestic pig rather that a wild pig or wild boar. A hog is reference to an adult swine and a sow is female pig that has reached maturity. The word boar can refer either to a wild pig or to a male pig that has reached maturity.

Pigs have been domesticated for thousands of years, and it was the Chinese that first began raising wild pigs as a source of food. It was also the Chinese that invented our first form of bacon. While bacon might seem like the most popular food product from pigs in the United States, ham is actually the most commonly produced pork product in the country.

Pigs have the reputation to be dirty animals and they are considered thus because they wallow in the mud. Keeping themselves cool in the warm weather is their way because they are unable to sweat and muddy water is their way to keep themselves cool and where they relax. Pigs actually are quite clean and also have been found to be highly intelligent animals.

Of course, like all domesticated livestock, swine produce a great deal of waste. This waste on pig farms typically is stored either in a waste pit or a waste lagoon. Farmers must pay careful attention to these waste containment systems in order to avoid many problems common to agricultural waste. Often, the solid waste will form a large sludge layer on the bottom of a pit or lagoon or perhaps the top will crust over causing severe odors and attracting flies.

Swine farm owners have options to use natural products where bacterial microbes eat away these organic waste materials and liquefy them. Agra Sphere is one natural agricultural waste product that contains naturally occurring bacteria and this is a chemical free agricultural solution that prevents sludge formation and crusting and also foaming. There is also another agricultural waste product that can help and this is Activator, an excellent option for waste pits and lagoons with sludge or already with a stubborn crust. These are natural products that can eat away the solid wastes and keep these in liquefied form that can be used as fertilizers in the farm.




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