Carol Dee
Garden Master
Maybe not surplus, but farmers where stuck with no place to sell them when all the packing plants shut down around here do to Covid outbreaks!
Baymule’s 2020 Garden
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baymule
Garden Master
I hope a lot of people bought hogs to help the farmers out.
flowerbug
Garden Master
sadly, i think a lot of them were killed and then buried or something got done with them, but not what was intended...
when you run a factory farm system you can't have the works get plugged up by the animals at the far end, if they can't be used they'll be disposed of. same thing happens at times when there is a disease outbreak and they have to deal with hundreds of thousands of animals quickly.
it is one of the reasons why i dislike factory farms and feedlot types of systems, at least with smaller farms you have a way of coping or can find people who might want them, the network of people is better and it's not as much a matter of sheer production and numbers but some considerations of the care of the animals and what can be done with their remains and what can be put to use in other ways.
seedcorn
Garden Master
None of them were killed and disposed of.
“Factory animals “ are already figured in the pipelines before they are even born.
“Factory animals” are inspected daily (usually at minimum 2X per day) so potential problems are dealt with before they become a problem by trained personnel who have vets as back up.
“Small farms” or are you referring to “hobby farms”? There are many more serious animal cruelty cases with “hobby farms” than commercial farms.
“Factory animals “ are already figured in the pipelines before they are even born.
“Factory animals” are inspected daily (usually at minimum 2X per day) so potential problems are dealt with before they become a problem by trained personnel who have vets as back up.
“Small farms” or are you referring to “hobby farms”? There are many more serious animal cruelty cases with “hobby farms” than commercial farms.
flowerbug
Garden Master
- Thread starter
- #536
baymule
Garden Master
A lot of people don't like factory farms, but they are a necessary food source. Not everyone can have their own pig pen, or steer lot or chickens or any source of meat animal. There is no way I can compete with the price of mass produced meat. I cannot buy cheap bulk feed by the thousands of pounds and must buy by the bag. I produce the meat that we eat and sell enough to offset costs, sometimes making a profit. I charge high prices and have customers that are happy to pay it. Personally, I think they are crazy, but if it helps us eat for free, hey, I'll keep selling it. Small scale, it works for me.
@seedcorn is right about animals being monitored and kept as healthy as possible. Farmers with hundreds or thousands of animals cannot let their guard down and must keep their animals healthy. To do otherwise would be financial suicide. The USA has some of the safest meat in the world.
People who disagree with the methods of CAFO's can find a small farmer or hobby farmer like me and pay $5 per pound, hanging weight, for pork finished out on soured corn, or $6 per pound for pastured chicken fed fermented feed, cut and packaged to their specifications. Many small farmers charge even more than I do.
Raising pigs and chickens using my methods is labor intensive and we have already discussed the greater cost. I raise 2 pigs, I have a customer who orders a pig every year. It pays for ours, feed and processing charges. So this year, 222 pounds, hanging weight, of pork cost us nothing except got my labor. I am on my second batch of Cornish Cross, I call them Dirty Birdies LOL, and have 15 out of 45 pre sold. 10 go to my hay guy, whom we bought a steer from, for keeping him fed until the pigs went to slaughter. Several will go to neighbors for their helping us with various things, the rest will go to my DD and her family. They are a LOT of work, moving them daily, feeding twice a day with fermented feed. Snakes are a problem and every time I move their chicken tractor, I have to bank around the bottom with dirt, stomp it down to keep the snakes out.
Heck, I buy chicken leg quarters on sale for 47 cents a pound, 10 pound bags, to can for the dogs. LOL LOL
@seedcorn is right about animals being monitored and kept as healthy as possible. Farmers with hundreds or thousands of animals cannot let their guard down and must keep their animals healthy. To do otherwise would be financial suicide. The USA has some of the safest meat in the world.
People who disagree with the methods of CAFO's can find a small farmer or hobby farmer like me and pay $5 per pound, hanging weight, for pork finished out on soured corn, or $6 per pound for pastured chicken fed fermented feed, cut and packaged to their specifications. Many small farmers charge even more than I do.
Raising pigs and chickens using my methods is labor intensive and we have already discussed the greater cost. I raise 2 pigs, I have a customer who orders a pig every year. It pays for ours, feed and processing charges. So this year, 222 pounds, hanging weight, of pork cost us nothing except got my labor. I am on my second batch of Cornish Cross, I call them Dirty Birdies LOL, and have 15 out of 45 pre sold. 10 go to my hay guy, whom we bought a steer from, for keeping him fed until the pigs went to slaughter. Several will go to neighbors for their helping us with various things, the rest will go to my DD and her family. They are a LOT of work, moving them daily, feeding twice a day with fermented feed. Snakes are a problem and every time I move their chicken tractor, I have to bank around the bottom with dirt, stomp it down to keep the snakes out.
Heck, I buy chicken leg quarters on sale for 47 cents a pound, 10 pound bags, to can for the dogs. LOL LOL
- Thread starter
- #537
baymule
Garden Master
This was terribly unfortunate, both for the animals and the farmers that raised them. With slaughter facilities shut down or barely operating, the supply chain broke and it was not feasible to keep feeding animals that were ready for slaughter. I feel for both the farmers and the animals. Just because the farmers had to kill their animals, doesn't mean that they didn't care. Farmers love their work and their animals or else they wouldn't be farmers.
This is a sad chapter in the book of life, but life must go forward so people have food to eat.
flowerbug
Garden Master
right, it was sad, and i hope we'll learn from it and figure out how to do better in the future...
Ridgerunner
Garden Master
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It's a case where romance meets reality. The supply chain broke. Cornish Cross meat chickens need to be butchered at a certain age or their hearts give out or their skeleton breaks down. Equipment at pig slaughter houses can handle 350 to maybe 400 pound animals, after that they get too big. Packaging is set up for certain sizes. They can't afford to feed animals they can't sell. The slaughter houses can't afford to butcher and package animals they can't sell and they soon run out of freezer space for storage.
They are on a schedule, they have baby animals coming in as part of their rotation. Those eggs were put in the incubator or those sows were bred well before to keep the supply coming. You cannot unhatch an egg or unbreed a sow. They need the room for the new animals already in the pipeline. The lessons they have learned is how to make a profit in a highly competitive industry on a very thin profit margin. When the supply chain breaks it hurts everyone.
I consider some of this a first world problem. If you are rich enough you can afford to worry about animal welfare and such, paying higher prices to get what you want if it matters that much to you. In the third world it's a little more basic, like how am I going to feed my family. There are plenty of people in the United States worried about how to feed their family too. It's not just third world countries. @baymule you may not consider some of your customers "rich" but in some of the countries I've worked they would be considered fabulously wealthy.
I grew up on a subsistence farm where the chickens, cattle, horses, and pigs were livestock, certainly not pets. Dad would not stand for any abuse toward them. They were well cared for. Not pampered but well fed according to their needs and given medical treatment if it was required. You can always find a bad apple but I don't see the vast majority of people running those factory farms as cruel abusive inhumane people. They are just doing the best they can the best way they know how.
They are on a schedule, they have baby animals coming in as part of their rotation. Those eggs were put in the incubator or those sows were bred well before to keep the supply coming. You cannot unhatch an egg or unbreed a sow. They need the room for the new animals already in the pipeline. The lessons they have learned is how to make a profit in a highly competitive industry on a very thin profit margin. When the supply chain breaks it hurts everyone.
I consider some of this a first world problem. If you are rich enough you can afford to worry about animal welfare and such, paying higher prices to get what you want if it matters that much to you. In the third world it's a little more basic, like how am I going to feed my family. There are plenty of people in the United States worried about how to feed their family too. It's not just third world countries. @baymule you may not consider some of your customers "rich" but in some of the countries I've worked they would be considered fabulously wealthy.
I grew up on a subsistence farm where the chickens, cattle, horses, and pigs were livestock, certainly not pets. Dad would not stand for any abuse toward them. They were well cared for. Not pampered but well fed according to their needs and given medical treatment if it was required. You can always find a bad apple but I don't see the vast majority of people running those factory farms as cruel abusive inhumane people. They are just doing the best they can the best way they know how.
Carol Dee
Garden Master
Well said @baymule and @Ridgerunner , yes our hog came from the broken chain. We could use it and kept it from being waste.
