MORGAN —Livestock do not typically play Houdini escape tricks, calm down by playing soccer or get bribed with vanilla wafers. But pigs are different.
“If we won the lottery, we’d still raise pigs,” said Karri Larsen, of Morgan.
Pig people are different, too, but no one can quite put a finger on how. Maybe it’s because pig people always have stories, Karri Larsen said.
“There’s never a dull moment,” she said. “Sometimes it’s tense, but it’s never dull.”
For example, some pigs are escape artists.
One day when Boris the Boar made a getaway, Tyler Larsen, now 18, drove his 1965 Ford truck down the road and told Boris he was a bad pig who needed to come back home. Boris got in the back of the truck just like a well-trained dog.
“That pig, when we had him, we’d slap him in the nose with a glove when he’d been bad, and he’d go and pout in the corner for quite a while,” said Stan Larsen, husband of Karri and father of Tyler.
The Larsen family also once had an old sow named Blue Moon, who bonded with Chuck, a pinto gelding. Chuck preferred to be with his pig friend instead of the other horses, Larsen said. The two would chase and nip at each other for play and lie down together to rest. Unfortunately, Boris the Boar got out one night and bit Chuck, so that was the end of that.
Pigs are smart and affectionate, and each has its own personality, Karri Larsen said. A pig is also clean: Given a choice, a pig will relieve itself on one side of its pen and sleep on the other side.
One recent spring day, the Larsens unloaded two of their pigs from a livestock trailer they’d backed up to the pen. The pigs were on their way back from the Larsen home in the Morgan city limits, where Stan Larsen said they were “taking a little visit.” (The trip was also so the girls could work with the pigs for the pig show.)
The pigs were reluctant to go down the ramp, so Jessica spread vanilla wafers to entice the pigs down to their pen. Conquistador, a big pink Yorkshire cross, made it down the ramp, but when Diablo, the smaller red Duroc/Yorkshire cross, refused, Tyler finally picked up the squealing pig and carried it.
Diablo objected to this indignity, her squeal seemingly loud enough to shatter both eardrums. A pig can squeal up to 115 decibels, while a jet engine measures at 113 decibels, Larsen said.
Tyler has graduated out of 4-H, but he now owns two Blue Butt breeding sows, Miss Piggy and Fern, the latter named after Wilbur’s owner in the book “Charlotte’s Web,” by T.H. White. Blue Butts are crosses between the pink Yorkshires and the black-and-white Hampshires.
Happy pigs
People often ask Stan Larsen if it’s hard to eat a pig his family has named, raised and even fed vanilla wafers.
“No,” Larsen said matter-of-factly.
The Larsens are involved with 4-H as well as Future Farmers of America. Daughter Jessica, 17, is the FFA vice president and FFA alumni president. Like her father, she’s served on a livestock committee for hogs. Jamie, 13, has also raised pigs for several years.
Jessica’s and Jamie’s pigs are two of about 140 pigs in the Morgan pig project.
On this particular day, the Duroc and the Yorkshire played with a soccer ball, kicking it as they raced down the long pen. The soccer ball helps the pigs stay busy, Larsen said, which is important because a bored pig is destructive.
A calm pig is a happy pig, he said, and a pig’s happiness is important because a happy pig gains weight faster.
The pork also tastes better, he added.
Larsen is a 4-H Junior Livestock Committee hog supervisor, a position he co-chairs with Rex and Alisa Hardman, also of Morgan. A pig is a profitable animal, and the 4-H club members are likely to make a few hundred dollars when the pigs are sold at auction.
A pig is profitable because it is an efficient meat animal that can convert three pounds of grain to one pound of pork. These carefully supervised 4-H farm pigs should gain at least a pound a day. When the Morgan 4-H clubs auction their hogs this summer, on Aug. 3, 4-H rules say those hogs should weigh at least 240 pounds, but no more than 300 pounds.
People who raise just a few hogs or participate in the 4-H swine projects are unanimous: Someone can love both pigs and pork.
That’s because piglets are cute, but older hogs are not, said Dennis Paul, of Mountain Green.
The Paul family also raises pigs — both for their own use and with the Blue Ribbon 4-H Club. They buy their pigs in the spring, and fatten them up during the summer on grain and Jersey cow milk, Paul said.
“I know exactly what goes into them,” Paul said about the family pigs. “Some people feed pigs a lot of garbage. Pigs will eat a lot of things: A few years ago, there were reports of people feeding other dead animals to pigs.”
The worst local story is that some people will feed their pigs too much junk food, like Cheetos or cookies. The Pauls won’t even feed their pigs leftovers; Paul seems disgusted with people who might let a pig grub in a manure pile for undigested grain.
When 4-H club members get a 60-pound pig in April, it should weigh at least 270 pounds by the time the action rolls around.
Not that this dramatic weight gain is guaranteed. Pigs are sometimes stressed by heat, and some pigs don’t like their feed, Paul said.
“Two of our pigs are already 220 pounds,” he said. “But there’s a couple of pigs we’re trying to push that can’t get weight on them.”
A pig will keep growing its entire life.
So what does an ideal, well-fed pig look like?
“I wish I knew,” Paul said. “Every time I think I know what the judges are looking for, they change on me. Some judges like a long, lean, muscular pig. Some judges like a more compact, stout pig.”
Home-schooled
Like a lot of home-raised pigs, the animals get names. Paul’s son’s pigs have borne names like Ham Hock, Pork Chop and Bacon. There was also Idiot, who proved not all pigs are smart.
“Every pig, like every person, has its own personality,” Paul said. “Some pigs are easy to move around and load and unload, and some are heck on wheels.”
Like everyone else who raises pigs, the Paul family has its runaway pig stories. The second year they raised pigs, three recent arrivals escaped.
One pig almost made it to the freeway, but a woman Paul describes as a “prim and proper lady” tackled the pig. They both landed in the irrigation ditch, he said, the woman screaming and the pig squealing.
Alisa Hardman and her husband, Rex Hardman, mentor the six-member Hootin’ Hogs 4-H Club, which includes their sons, Lyman 14, and Brennan, 11.
Past pigs with the Hootin’ Hogs 4-H Club are Montgomery, Moolan, and White and Nerdy. Houdini, a mostly black pig, could climb a 3-foot fence and go exploring around the farm, but he ended his wandering ways when he got too fat to climb the fence.
“They’re just a fun animal; they have fun personalities,” Alisa Hardman said.
Many pig-loving families say the pigs themselves are very human. The pigs apparently agree.
“I think (Winston) Churchill said this: ‘Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, and pigs treat us as equals,’ ” Hardman said.
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“If we won the lottery, we’d still raise pigs,” said Karri Larsen, of Morgan.
Pig people are different, too, but no one can quite put a finger on how. Maybe it’s because pig people always have stories, Karri Larsen said.
“There’s never a dull moment,” she said. “Sometimes it’s tense, but it’s never dull.”
For example, some pigs are escape artists.
One day when Boris the Boar made a getaway, Tyler Larsen, now 18, drove his 1965 Ford truck down the road and told Boris he was a bad pig who needed to come back home. Boris got in the back of the truck just like a well-trained dog.
“That pig, when we had him, we’d slap him in the nose with a glove when he’d been bad, and he’d go and pout in the corner for quite a while,” said Stan Larsen, husband of Karri and father of Tyler.
The Larsen family also once had an old sow named Blue Moon, who bonded with Chuck, a pinto gelding. Chuck preferred to be with his pig friend instead of the other horses, Larsen said. The two would chase and nip at each other for play and lie down together to rest. Unfortunately, Boris the Boar got out one night and bit Chuck, so that was the end of that.
Pigs are smart and affectionate, and each has its own personality, Karri Larsen said. A pig is also clean: Given a choice, a pig will relieve itself on one side of its pen and sleep on the other side.
One recent spring day, the Larsens unloaded two of their pigs from a livestock trailer they’d backed up to the pen. The pigs were on their way back from the Larsen home in the Morgan city limits, where Stan Larsen said they were “taking a little visit.” (The trip was also so the girls could work with the pigs for the pig show.)
The pigs were reluctant to go down the ramp, so Jessica spread vanilla wafers to entice the pigs down to their pen. Conquistador, a big pink Yorkshire cross, made it down the ramp, but when Diablo, the smaller red Duroc/Yorkshire cross, refused, Tyler finally picked up the squealing pig and carried it.
Diablo objected to this indignity, her squeal seemingly loud enough to shatter both eardrums. A pig can squeal up to 115 decibels, while a jet engine measures at 113 decibels, Larsen said.
Tyler has graduated out of 4-H, but he now owns two Blue Butt breeding sows, Miss Piggy and Fern, the latter named after Wilbur’s owner in the book “Charlotte’s Web,” by T.H. White. Blue Butts are crosses between the pink Yorkshires and the black-and-white Hampshires.
Happy pigs
People often ask Stan Larsen if it’s hard to eat a pig his family has named, raised and even fed vanilla wafers.
“No,” Larsen said matter-of-factly.
The Larsens are involved with 4-H as well as Future Farmers of America. Daughter Jessica, 17, is the FFA vice president and FFA alumni president. Like her father, she’s served on a livestock committee for hogs. Jamie, 13, has also raised pigs for several years.
Jessica’s and Jamie’s pigs are two of about 140 pigs in the Morgan pig project.
On this particular day, the Duroc and the Yorkshire played with a soccer ball, kicking it as they raced down the long pen. The soccer ball helps the pigs stay busy, Larsen said, which is important because a bored pig is destructive.
A calm pig is a happy pig, he said, and a pig’s happiness is important because a happy pig gains weight faster.
The pork also tastes better, he added.
Larsen is a 4-H Junior Livestock Committee hog supervisor, a position he co-chairs with Rex and Alisa Hardman, also of Morgan. A pig is a profitable animal, and the 4-H club members are likely to make a few hundred dollars when the pigs are sold at auction.
A pig is profitable because it is an efficient meat animal that can convert three pounds of grain to one pound of pork. These carefully supervised 4-H farm pigs should gain at least a pound a day. When the Morgan 4-H clubs auction their hogs this summer, on Aug. 3, 4-H rules say those hogs should weigh at least 240 pounds, but no more than 300 pounds.
People who raise just a few hogs or participate in the 4-H swine projects are unanimous: Someone can love both pigs and pork.
That’s because piglets are cute, but older hogs are not, said Dennis Paul, of Mountain Green.
The Paul family also raises pigs — both for their own use and with the Blue Ribbon 4-H Club. They buy their pigs in the spring, and fatten them up during the summer on grain and Jersey cow milk, Paul said.
“I know exactly what goes into them,” Paul said about the family pigs. “Some people feed pigs a lot of garbage. Pigs will eat a lot of things: A few years ago, there were reports of people feeding other dead animals to pigs.”
The worst local story is that some people will feed their pigs too much junk food, like Cheetos or cookies. The Pauls won’t even feed their pigs leftovers; Paul seems disgusted with people who might let a pig grub in a manure pile for undigested grain.
When 4-H club members get a 60-pound pig in April, it should weigh at least 270 pounds by the time the action rolls around.
Not that this dramatic weight gain is guaranteed. Pigs are sometimes stressed by heat, and some pigs don’t like their feed, Paul said.
“Two of our pigs are already 220 pounds,” he said. “But there’s a couple of pigs we’re trying to push that can’t get weight on them.”
A pig will keep growing its entire life.
So what does an ideal, well-fed pig look like?
“I wish I knew,” Paul said. “Every time I think I know what the judges are looking for, they change on me. Some judges like a long, lean, muscular pig. Some judges like a more compact, stout pig.”
Home-schooled
Like a lot of home-raised pigs, the animals get names. Paul’s son’s pigs have borne names like Ham Hock, Pork Chop and Bacon. There was also Idiot, who proved not all pigs are smart.
“Every pig, like every person, has its own personality,” Paul said. “Some pigs are easy to move around and load and unload, and some are heck on wheels.”
Like everyone else who raises pigs, the Paul family has its runaway pig stories. The second year they raised pigs, three recent arrivals escaped.
One pig almost made it to the freeway, but a woman Paul describes as a “prim and proper lady” tackled the pig. They both landed in the irrigation ditch, he said, the woman screaming and the pig squealing.
Alisa Hardman and her husband, Rex Hardman, mentor the six-member Hootin’ Hogs 4-H Club, which includes their sons, Lyman 14, and Brennan, 11.
Past pigs with the Hootin’ Hogs 4-H Club are Montgomery, Moolan, and White and Nerdy. Houdini, a mostly black pig, could climb a 3-foot fence and go exploring around the farm, but he ended his wandering ways when he got too fat to climb the fence.
“They’re just a fun animal; they have fun personalities,” Alisa Hardman said.
Many pig-loving families say the pigs themselves are very human. The pigs apparently agree.
“I think (Winston) Churchill said this: ‘Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, and pigs treat us as equals,’ ” Hardman said.
View the original article here
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