This little piggy...

Written to Afro by Novalima

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Our first litter of eight (organic) piglets was born on May 27th. A day later, another litter of two piglets was born. Unfortunately, the third birthing went haywire, and the gilt savaged and cannibalized her piglets. Apparently, this is not an entirely uncommon phenomenon:

Occasionally sows will attack their own piglets – usually soon after birth – causing injury or death. In extreme cases, where feasible, outright cannibalism will occur and the sow will eat the piglets. The development of this behaviour is often complex and difficult to stop and can cause significant losses.

Savaging of piglets most commonly occurs in gilt litters (but is not always restricted to them). This tends to mean that major problems are restricted to new herds where all farrowings are gilts. There are a number of particular factors that may trigger gilts to savage.

Based on the articles' recommendations, there does not appear to be a whole lot we could have done to avoid this tragedy.

1. Adopt a quiet approach to management of farrowing houses
   
2. Ensure gilts are crated 3 or more days prior to farrowing
3. Provide bran as a substitute to high level compound feed prior to farrowing
4. Induce and supervise farrowing and box piglets away during the farrowing process
5. Cull any sow which savages more than one litter
6. Avoid cross fostering litters on to gilts
   

To be honest I was more than a little surprised to learn that the National Animal Disease Information Service (NADIS) in UK only recommends culling sows which savage more than one litter. One has to be extremely careful about reacting too strongly without sufficient data, particularly with an issue that is this emotionally charged. Lone and I speculated about what we would have done had the first litter rather than the third gone wrong. Thankfully, that did not happen and Esben, our virtual Assistant Farm Manager, was able to research the issue and send us the very helpful article referenced above.

I am happy to report that the first two litters are doing splendidly, eight and two piglets, respectively.

In non-hog-related news, we finally received our Carta de Certificação – Produção vegetal Ref.: CC 5076 and our Notificação de Não-Conformidade – Ref.:NNC 269. These documents are the formal report from the inspection undertaken at Fazenda Alfheim on February 6th by IBD, the Instituto Biodinâmico for Rural Development. In sum, the Carta de Certificação – Produção vegetal specified 11 non-conformities, all minor, while the Carta de Certificação – Produção animal listed eight non-conformities, one major and seven minor. We have one month to document appropriate corrective actions. On the whole we are very pleased with this starting point, i.e. only one major non-conformity, the absence of individual identification of the animals, which, thankfully, is easily corrected. In fact, in the case of our cattle, we have already taken corrective action. The hogs are next. 7-9-13!

Since we first began down the road to organic certification, a process which has been anything but smooth, Lone and I have struggled to reconcile our view of organic with that of the certification organizations. One aspect of our discomfort stems from the current, more limited definition of the word organic:

But the word "organic" around 1970 connoted a great deal more than a technique for growing vegetables. The movement's pioneers set out to create not just an alternative mode of production (the farms) but of distribution (the co-ops and health-food stores) and even consumption. A "countercuisine" based on whole grains and unprocessed ingredients rose up to challenge conventional industrial "white bread" food. ("Plastic food" was an epithet you heard a lot.)

This difference of approach is best illustrated by a theoretical debate which took place in the 1990s and engulfed the organic food world as it grew from a movement into an industry: Could a Twinkie be certified organic?

One group of industry-minded partisans argued, "yes." If the ingredients were produced organically then the Twinkie - or anything else - could be organic. Others, who looked to organic food as inherently whole and nutritious, argued, "no." Even if the ingredients were organic, the Twinkie would be so far from what "organic food" meant that the product would render the word meaningless. So who was right? Technically, the first camp. If a food manufacturer could substitute organic ingredients for the conventional ones in a Twinkie, then indeed the Twinkie could qualify for the USDA Organic label.

Our other principle misgiving relates to the missing local element in today's definition of organic, a position articulated in a new book, Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller, by Jeff Rubin.

First the fish is taken to port in Norway, where it is frozen and transferred to another vessel, which will take it to a larger port, probably Hamburg or Rotterdam, where it will be transferred to another ship and schlepped to China — most likely Qingdao, on the Shandong Peninsula, China's fish-processing capital. There the whole salmon will be thawed and processed on a sprawling, neonlit factory floor where squads of young women with nimble fingers skin, debone and fillet the fish. It will then be refrozen, packaged, stowed on another container ship and sent to a supermarket in Europe or North America. Two months after it was caught, the salmon will be thawed, displayed on crushed ice under gleaming halogen lamps and sold as "fresh."

Since my last blog post we also acquired another horse, Gargalo or Bottleneck, from Márcio Magano. R$400 (€144.95 or $205.88)...a bargain for a very solid, albeit elderly, 7/8 quarter horse. We took advantage of Gargalo's arrival to have all of the horses shoed. Makes all the difference when riding on still-muddy-after-the-recent-rains trails.

Finally, Marcos and his father are making beautiful progress on the extension to our storage rooms. The week-on-week advancement, outside and inside, is very encouraging.