A Day in the Life of a Hog Farmer in Iowa

Good morning y'all. So today is Monday morning. It is a week today since the pigs came in. They came in last Monday evening. They've been doing really good actually. You guys will see them here but we're down here to do pig chores this morning. Emma and I come down here and do pig chores every morning and I thought I'd just bring you guys along with us today and show you what that looks like. The first thing is I need to get my mask on because it does get really dusty in here so it's definitely just good to wear a mask when you're in the building for very long. Okay mask is on so we can get into the pen and get started. You can see they're all doing really good. They're already growing and getting big and looking very good. So when I'm going through a pen what we're looking for we're just first of all making sure all the pigs look good, making sure that there isn't too much coughing or anything meaning that they would be getting sick. They were getting over a little bit of a cough when they came in but that's been getting better. We're just making sure the feeders are working correctly and they all have feed. We're making sure the waters are working correctly and we're just checking for water leaks because sometimes these little plastic tees will break and we have to fix those. We had to do that the other day. So we're really just doing an overview of every pen and making sure that nothing looks off. One thing about being in the hog barn is that they're aggressive little things and you'll just be standing. If you stand still they come up and start chewing on you and biting you and just basically using you as a chew toy. Ow that hurts buddy. It's cute when they're really little but the bigger they get the more painful it gets and pretty soon you got 300 pound pigs in here that are aggressive. It's not so cute then. Okay every pen has been checked, feeders are looking good, waters are looking good. They're all looking really healthy and getting big. I think that about wraps up chores this morning. We just check over the temperature in here too because our target temperature is 79. That's what we want to maintain in this building no matter what the temperature outside is. So it's feeling good in here right now. Update, the pigs have gotten bigger so our target temperature is now 75 not 79 but it's looking good in here. Also when you're doing pig chores, fun little fact, you have to have a set of clothes dedicated to just pig chores. Like these are our pig clothes because they're just gonna smell like a hog house every day so you just don't want to have all your clothes smelling like pigs so you just do one set of work clothes for pig chores. Emma has been impatiently waiting for me to finish recording this whole time. Emma's a get in and get it done and not stand around recording too much kind of person. You may notice it's actually raining out here. It's supposed to rain today and then also rain tomorrow so it's gonna be great. We need all the rain we can get and I'm very excited for it to be raining. Y'all look what these pigs did. It's actually, we just switched mornings here real fast. It's actually the next morning now so we're back down here to do pig chores. We're gonna be getting a load of pigs in this evening to finish filling up this house so yeah you guys will be seeing more footage of this today. Anyways we get in here. This is the, we call it the sick pen. None of these guys are actually really sick though. They're just either the smaller ones or there is you know that one with a limp. This is where they stay. We came down here. This was flooding out okay. What they did is they piled so much feed in on top of this little automatic water thing. You guys can see how it works over here. They just push it and water comes out. They piled so much feed on top of this that it was being held down by the feed and then just completely flooded everything over here. So now we got to clean all this feed out. There's still so much in the water. Look. Then you come and look right over here and there's the culprits. The little troublemakers. They look very guilty right now. They've been plotting about this. So it also whenever this gets wet it plugs up and feed won't come out of this tube. So we gotta, well that doesn't seem to be working. That is what we like to see. Took a little bit of effort, a little bit of team effort here. But we got it. Now you guys try not to ruin this too quickly. Okay now we check the rest of the pens. Y'all, Emma was back here like patting this one and it was just sprawled out flat and it looked like it was dead. But then you just give it a minute and it was just having a really good nap. Three pigs on top of it. He was just enjoying his nap. Okay we're gonna go in here and we're gonna cut this pig. I'll talk to you in here while it's cool and I can have the camera plugged in. A couple things and go ahead and fast forward if you don't I'm gonna talk. I will say that I'm gonna draw a correlation, a spiritual correlation. So if you don't want to be preached at, whatever, that's your choice. But this channel is to glorify God. So if I can draw someone closer to the Lord, I will. But then I also have to do a disclaimer on what we're going to do. It is good, acceptable, husbandry practices. We will use clean techniques, new blade, sharp blade, which means it's sterile and it's sharp. And we'll use iodine and a septic and I'll give them a shot to keep preventing any infection. Pigs squeal. They squeal for no reason. He's gonna be cut. He'll squeal. I mean we could put nice little beautiful music over it and it's gonna be less traumatizing to you. But just being caught, being held, he's gonna be squealing. The blade is so sharp he's not even and he's gonna be so worried about just being held that he's not gonna feel pain. This isn't a pain-induced squealing. It's just let me go and leave me alone type of a squealing. But there's more pain afterwards with the soreness than there is during the operation. So I'm not gonna lie to you, there's pain. People's perception of pain is so, I'm just gonna say wrong. Pain is for people to to know that something's not right. Changes need to be made. And people just hate pain. They don't want pain. They say pain is bad. Pain is not bad. You know you have the instantaneous pain. You touch a hot burner. Oh that's hot. I'm gonna stop touching the hot burner. And that's why pain exists. To tell you something's wrong it needs to be changed. I throw my back out. I don't think I have particularly wore out back or back injury. But I have. There's times my back hurts and most of the time it is because I overdid it the day or two before. Not in the sense of too much or a poorly poor form. Just I overdid it. And my back is saying hey Adam you you we're not going to continue to be able to take the type of harassment you gave us yesterday. Bucking bales or doing that. Don't do it again. And so then for a while six months I start being easy on my back because pain told me that's not good. And then I need a good reminder. I work through the pain but then I take it as you know I need to let my back recover. I abused it. It needs to recover. It's not going to continue to take the abuse that I gave it. And that's what pain is for. You know Americans we're very good at painkillers. And we want to kill all physical pain and all even emotional pain. You got a problem? Go get a pill. Bad pain? Get a pill. And we don't try to prevent pain. We try to cover it up after the fact. So that makes me think about the spiritual conditions. You can't treat spiritual conditions with a physical pill. You got to you better be careful doing that. And so that's where people will ask me can you pray that my pain goes away? Might be a physical pain. Might be a spiritual pain. And I tell them no. God might want you to have that pain enough for you to make a proper change. You know pain when you touch a hot stove. You make the change. You pull your hand off of it. Don't do that. And don't do it again. And learn never to do that again. And there's a lot of people that have pain. You know what my prayer is? That you get right whatever it is. Of course there's physical conditions and there's physical pain that there's not an immediate correction to be made spiritually. I understand that. But I'm saying there's a lot of pain out there. Both emotional and spiritual and even physical. That's because of a person's conduct even. And if God wants somebody to correct or mature or grow, he may give them pain to tell them you need to do different. You need to do better. And I know there's times and somebody's already uh or even I'll say this maybe God gives you a knowledge you need to pass on to somebody else. Don't do this because look at me. Look at the shape I'm in. Look at my pain. And I got this pain from doing that. You don't need to do it. So obviously I don't want people to hurt. I don't want to people to be in pain. I know there's there's disabilities or or uh what's the word just people have issues with their bodies. That's not their fault. That that's not correctable. That's just unfortunate. And I'm not just chastising you you guys in that sense. I don't want you to be in pain. But there's a lot of pain in this world that's brought upon themselves and could be corrected if they do different. So that's what I think about pain. Don't just cover up the pain. Correct the condition. Uh maybe learn from other people's mistakes not to go through the pain that they're going through. Maybe if you have pain you can keep somebody else from going through the pain you're going through. That might be a physical condition. It might be a mental or spiritual or emotional condition. Uh pain has a purpose unfortunately. Now this hog he has pain. Most of his pain is not a physical condition. That's what we think. Oh he's he's hurting psychologically because he does not want to be held. He does not want to be controlled. And there's a sermon in that. But he'll be squealing and people freak out. But no actually what I'm doing for this pig is making it better. Which quite frankly is a great metaphor for the pain God gives us. And some people just they think God owes them a pain-free life. No. If I don't castrate this hog he's worthless. He's pepperoni. He's hot dog meat. Okay. Uh which is basically you give them to a packer to get rid of them so you don't have to bury them. And uh but I cut this one testicle out. He just got missed. And he goes from being pepperoni to being pork chops. He goes from being a freebie and a liability to being an asset. And what little pain he goes through is of a tremendous uh benefit to him. So case in point. He'll squeal when he's being held. After the fact you let him go. He'll be walking around. He won't be squealing. So it tells you it's not the physical pain that's the problem. It's the um he don't like being made better. He don't like being held and and us doing what it takes to make him into a valuable hog. So I know this is like a long sermon. So um but we're not going to do what it takes to make this channel huge and lots of money. Because this channel has always been the idea of glorifying God and encouraging people. Even give them giving them hard truths at times. But um and to show people what uh that there are still good good humble um God-fearing hard-working families out here. Including children. And we always put God first and and family second. And that's the way the channel will always be. And we'll never be ginormous. Because even though we know what it would take to get more clicks, more views, more revenue. We won't do it. So this is something unique though. We'll see what we got here. Uh and we'll go cut this hog. Okay I think I told you. Um so we're going to take this good clean scalpel handle. And then number 12. We always called these nutter blades. Number 12. And it's sterile. One time use. I don't know it costs like 20 cents a piece. When you buy a box of 100. Then I'll I'll have iodine on my hands. We'll iodine him up. We're trying to bring him outside. Just I mean inch and a half rain last night. Just nice and clean. So we'll do it out here. And then we've got a mark with a blue mark. He's the only one with a blue mark in there. You can see right there is the blade. I've got to click it on here. Okay well I'll get it on here in a second. And uh we're gonna grab him and bring him out here. So ah got y'all messy Abby. Yeah I don't even know where he's at right now. He has a blue mark on him. There he's see he's bleeding a little bit. But as soon as we set him as soon as we set him down he's he's cool. And he'll bleed a little bit. He'll be a little stiff. But um we'll give him a shot. He it's not like traumatizing. So he's gonna be way better for it. And here's here's the nut. You have a sperm cord and then a whole bunch of fat up here. And there's the full-sized one. So um there you have it. Alrighty y'all chores over here at the first building are done. We need to go over and get the other hog houses set up because we actually have two loads of pigs coming in tonight. Not sure what time but they'll be in sometime tonight. And we are going to finish filling up this building. And then the rest of the loads will go over to these two buildings just in the north building. So we need to go over there and do some prep work for that. Um we're going to get the gates set up. Get the feeder set up. The water is set up. The heater's going. All that stuff to make sure that it is ready for the little pigs. Got the inside mostly set up. We're waiting for dad to get here now because we have a few more things to do. But the feed truck actually just left here. Um they got the bins filled up with feed right before the pigs get here so that it'll all be ready for the feed. And it's a specific feed that these little pigs need. So the feed changes the entire time as they're growing. There's different kinds of feed for like each stage and everything and as they get bigger. So this kind of feed is specifically for these little pigs and that'll continue changing as they grow. Y'all there's baby birds but they flew away. Whoa there's two nests. Oh there is one more. It's just chilling. It doesn't want to leave yet. That one's practicing it's flying. I'm gonna get the feeders filling up. Okay the feeders are gonna start filling up. Once they get filled up I'll just go through with the scoop and we'll scoop some out of the feeders and put it down into the base. That way the pigs will find it easily once they go into the pens. Okay the feed lines are stepped up a little bit. The feed lines are running and filling feeders and we'll get all since the pigs are coming tonight we'll get all these feeders filled and then adjusted. Little pigs you need a little bit more but we'll also throw feed in the feed pans. You want just enough feeder space that is feeding the feed pans that they aren't wasting it out. So you balance it out. But the pigs have nothing to do but eat and spin that little agitator. So you don't have the feeders open too wide. We'll get that adjusted. To train them to it we manually throw feed out. Then I'm going to start here in May. On feeder pigs we shouldn't have to run heat but we have to run heat. I'll show you how to boot up a heater. So I'll take right here's our gas line coming in. Make sure the gas line's on and then I don't know this ain't this is how I do it. Don't do this at home you don't do it. But this is a sediment trap. I open up my sediment trap cap because I've had the line clean and there's nothing but air in. So I need to get LP here and I can get LP here. I can hear it when it changes because LP is a different density than air. That's why LP will settle. If you have a gas leak it settles to the floor or to the basement in a house. And I can hear the change. It'll come out under medium pressure actually low pressure but it'll go and it changes its tone. Then I know LP propane is here. So technically I'm teaching the girls how to do this and you guys just get to listen. So the girls are learning how to do this if they want to do it on their own. So I take and I clamp on here. I open up this cap. I listen for the change in the air density. Then I know it's down here and then all you got to do is make sure that on this heater it's a good heater. It shouldn't need a lot of repair. Plug it in and it should take care of itself and you make sure hot air is coming out. LP again will sink. So you say well that's dangerous. Yeah life is dangerous but I'll tell you you need to know about the dangers and then you react right. It's dangerous if I came in here there was a lot of methane and that's dangerous because methane will explode. Foam on the pit will explode. So yeah don't think that you're going to tell me about the dangers. It's dangerous. You need to be aware of the dangers and this isn't my greatest fear right here. We're letting a little LP out but yeah I'm going to say you let the LP out. You put it back on. You make sure you have it tight. You make sure there's no leaks. You make sure it's right okay and we're dealing with low pressure. It's not like high pressure stuff here. So yeah I'll tell the girls and if they ever do it by themselves make sure it's right and you got to be careful but LP will sink. You don't let a lot out and then when it ignites it's not the little bit of LP I let out here that's the problem. If methane gets trapped in bubbles on this pit it doesn't explode. I forget the word. I'm not going to think of it right now but it is flammable. Highly flammable and the flame is super super speed flame. Technically it's not an explosion. It is an ignition but that is still blow the roof off. If we have the wrong kind of gas in here and this building sat empty for two weeks. We come in here. Mask ain't going to do nothing. You'll faint and die. So there's a lot more dangerous than just me letting low LP out but life is dangerous. You need to be aware of the dangers and then react accordingly. So yeah tell these girls make sure there's not a bunch of foam down there to ignite. That's super dangerous. That's the way you blow a top off of a building and people die is if you're holding gas in the pit in foam or if you've got a bunch of the invisible poisonous gas in here because you didn't vent it properly beforehand. So here's how we do it. Pop that. Did you girls hear that? Obvious cone change. You can smell LP. You can't smell natural gas. I can smell LP. If you smell LP you're in danger. A lot of it but I cannot but don't wait till you smell it. It's too late by You should hear the cone change before you smell it. Cap it back up. This line is curved. We'll get some soapy water spray on this to make sure it's sealed up. You need to make sure that you move the cap girls not the the pipe the nipple. This is a little nipple they call it. Now this is this is curved. We should be able to give it a couple seconds. Make sure you don't have loitering lingering LP. Plug it in and it should deal with itself. Sometimes it takes a little bit for the gas to get here up into the pilot or it just doesn't have a pilot. So you'll might have to do this twice. If it doesn't detect the flame it'll kick itself out and not come back on. And that's the way we'll start up the heater but you got to run heat in on these hubs right away because it's so cold outside. That one took off right away. It took immediately but if you purge this first time you never booted yourself out. Just got the gas up there blowing out good hot air. So we started the feed line right. We've got nursery feed in here and what happens all the time you got to watch for is the the bins bridge up. Pain in the butt. It happens when you get new corn in in the fall. It happens when they're cleaning their bins out in late summer. It happens when you get nursery feed because they put oil in the little pig feed. And um so runs empty. You see this bin is pretty well and you just keep working it off the bottom and it eventually takes. So it filled two feeders before it ran empty. So we have to come out here and constantly get this flowing good. Once you get it flowing good it usually takes care of itself. But high humidity times of the year, new corn time of the year, or nursery feed it's it's it's uh a pain. We are finished at the hog house. It's about noon so we've been working in these hog houses all morning. Got a lot done and there's a lot that needed to be done before the pigs got here. Several water leaks to get fixed all that stuff. I say water leaks it's not like major water leaks in the pipelines. It's in the actual water system and they're on the feeders. The little plastic tees in there break really easily so we had several of those to replace. We did that and got the feeders filled up. Got the heaters going. Got everything set up correctly that it'll be ready for the pigs coming in tonight. So now we're just gonna head home and chill inside for the afternoon and then we will be ready whenever the trucks get here tonight. I'm not sure what time that will be probably not till about eight to nine o'clock so might be a pretty late night out um unloading pigs tonight but we'll get it done and we will see you guys then. Turn on some lights in here. All right everybody it is now much later. Let me check the time here. It is 8.07. We are down here to unload pigs. So we are over here in this first building. We're gonna unload. We have two loads coming tonight. Two semis. We're gonna unload the first load. It's gonna finish filling up this building. Then we're gonna take the rest over to Papa's and Granny's. The building's over there and then once the second load gets here they will all go over there. So the first load should be getting here in like a few minutes. Should not be long at all. Second load however isn't gonna get here until like 10 o'clock so it's gonna be much later. Gonna be a late night unloading pigs but we'll get it done. Get all these thing right now but we are over here at the second building now. We got the first truck unloaded. He just left. It's about, it's getting close to 10 o'clock and the other truck is about, um, he said these pigs are coming all the way from Canada so they've had a long trip and the guy said he's 13 kilometers away. So you people that know kilometers will probably know what that means a lot better than I will but Dad says it's like eight miles away so he's getting pretty close and we shouldn't have to wait too long hopefully. Also um I didn't really think it was supposed to rain tonight but it's raining so that kind of isn't super, even though I'm happy that we've been getting rain, uh it's not, takes away a little bit of the pleasantness of being out here in the cold at night. So we're just gonna get this finished up and then head inside and get to bed. Okay he's almost here so we're getting set up. We have the trucks running as he pulls up so you can actually see a little bit here. Also I am freezing cold, really cold right now so that's not fun but it is what it is. Okay I think we are ready. Okay y'all it is about a quarter till 11. We are going to get inside and get cleaned up and head to bed. All the pigs are unloaded and they will be good and we will do chores tomorrow. But I think that's gonna be it for today so I'm gonna end this video here. Thank y'all for watching and we'll see you next time.