Yesterday had gorgeous weather so I did some errands; with the car windows down while driving. I drove the long(er) way home. My peripheral vision noticed some animals in a pen. Fat, low to the ground, short legs . . .PIGS! They were black. I have never seen pigs before only pictures. Everyone around here has cows, chickens, goats, sheep; but no pigs. But wow what a smell! Whew. I do not mind horse or cow manure smell. But pigs :eek:
Don’t ever drive by a farrowing house. That smell you smelled becomes very concentrated in a farrowing house.
Yeah. My neighbors have pigs, (they’re about a mile away, but in this area, that’s neighbors). Two are farrowing this week, and the neighbors are out of town, so I’m hog sitting. DAMN. I’m generally not offended by livestock smells, but pigs reek. They’re a little intimidating, too, they’re so huge and snorty. The smell isn’t noticeable in the outdoor pig pens, which are very large, but the farrowing barn…ugh.
Just don’t fall down in the pen.
Pigs are very,very dangerous.
So is a bottle fed Jersey bull.
I’ve smelled pig farms and chicken farms.
For my money, chickens are a LOT worse.
I used to volunteer at a living history farm that would sometimes bring in pigs for the summer, sometimes not. We’d be walking up the lane one fine day in April, still 50 to 100 yards away, and go “Oh shit they got pigs this year”.
Visitors loved watching the sheep and cows. Nobody ever watched the pigs. All they ever did was sit in their pens and shit and attract tons of flies and stink.
Yeah, I know, my user name is a Pig. Talking-animal writers love sentient pigs. Real pigs, though, ain’t so hot.
I cleaned out a chicken coop once.
Once.
Heh. Reminds me of driving across Iowa once. Corn field, corn field, corn field, corn fleld, gaghog farm gag, corn field, corn field, corn field, cornfield, gag hog farm gag etc. all across state.
Depends on how you raise 'em.
I usually raise 2-4 pigs per year on about an acre of pasture. There is no smell.
That’s usually the first thing people comment on when we go see them “Why doesn’t it stink like a hog farm?”
My guess is that the chlorophyll from all the grass they’re eating somehow neutralizes the odor, or it might just be that there isn’t enough pig poop in any one place to concentrate the stink.
Oh, and I agree on the chicken comments.
I go in there once a year in a tyvek suit with a respirator, and that’s with only 5 hens!
This was along I-84 (or I-80N as it really should be known). During WWII the gummit built some quickie housing near the Boardman Bombing Range/Hermiston Depot. It was surplus after the war and some guy bought it and used it for pig housing. Then it was abandoned.
Years and years afterwards it still stunk to high heavens driving by. Keep in mind, this is Eastern Oregon. Sagebrush country. Very dry. And it still stunk.
It just doesn’t stink fresh, it stinks dry for years afterwards.
There is reputed to be a factory pig “farm” in Utah that can be smelt by pilots in small planes flying thousands of feet overhead. The nearby town is pretty much occupied only by people who have to live there due to working at the “farm”.
And by “near”, he means within some kilometers/miles of it.
I’m reminded of an old local news story about a feud between a guy and a church that was next to his property. He wanted to run a business on his property, but no matter what he tried the church would find some legal excuse to shut him down because they apparently didn’t want a business next to them. Finally he dug through local law and found an old city law dating back to when it was mostly farm land, and found a business that had legal protection so they couldn’t shut him down. Hog farming.
So the church ended up stuck next to a hog farm, rather than a less offensive business. And when he built a barn for the hogs, it came complete with a ventilation system whose exhaust just happened to empty out in the direction of the church. Which is why this thread reminded me of the story.
Anthropologist Marvin Harris, in his books (especially Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches and Good to Eat) argues that if pigs aren’t kept in extreme circumstances they are actually very clean animals. Their problem is that they don’t sweat (the expression “Sweat like a pig” notwithstanding) and need to cool down with a mud wallow. And they prefer “clean” mud. If they can’t get clean mud, they’ll wallow in sludge. If they can’t get that, they’ll wallow in urine and feces. Understandable, if the alternative is death by heatstroke. Don’t overcrowd your pigs and give them what they need and they’ll be relatively clean and happy. Overcrowd them, as in a factory farm, and they’'ll stink.
I’m sure chickens are more tolerable when they’re not packed in tight, too. Those chicken farms that made me gag were pretty densely populated.
I’m with the folk who don’t crowd their animals, fowl or porcine. Pigshit stinks worse than horse or cow or sheep or chicken IMHO, but about the same as human ;0. I DON’T raise pigs because I could only have one or two and they are scary smart. Plus I was raised on books with sentient pigs;). I do eat pasture raised pork. I don’t want to know their names, that’s all. My three steers are Chuck, Sir Loin, and Hamburger :). Our fences are horse high and bull strong, but not really hog tight. The acreage is there, but not the containment, or the willingness to eat a critter I could get close to. I don’t eat dogs either (and some of my ancestors did).
Back in college, a friend of mine took me out to her family’s place out in the sticks. They had a largish chicken coup in which they were keeping an orphaned fox until it got large enough to release. Holy cats, that thing stank up the whole backyard. Just this sharp musky scent of fox everywhere.
In the novel Watership Down, the rabbits have select term for stinking like a fox and now I understand why.
Pigs? Not that bad.
Chickens? Meh.
Minks? Oh my God do they stink. Lived about a mile from a mink farm. When the wind blew the right direction it was unbearable to be outside. Then a neighbor decided to spread mink crap on his pasture. Besides the stink, the flies were terrible. The county health department made him remove as much of the mink guano as possible. He also learned a valuable lesson. The milk from his cows picked up some of the smell, for months he had to toss the milk.
Animals don’t choose to live in their shit, we make them. Pastured animals don’t stink. Pigs and chickens included.
But the part of North Carolina where all the hog farms are? My god.