Pigs, Hogs, Stupidity, Few Giggles

So there I was, sitting in the hog house on a below zero night in Iowa on the ready in case one of my sows had trouble "coming in" (giving birth). The next thing this Bronx Jew knew, my hand was inside the sow helping extract baby pigs. When it was over, I was sick to my stomach and almost heaved my guts out. Lesson? You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and making a hog farmer out of a street guy from the Bronx is damn near impossible.

And then...
There was the time I bought 100 feeder pigs from a farmer out of Missouri. By then I was certain that I knew what I was doing, and I insisted on a vaccination certificate from the farmer for a deadly virus. I did not stop to consider that the "honest Missouri farmer" might be giving me a phony certificate, which he did. The hogs by then weighed 100 plus pounds and started to die. The rendering works truck came by every day to pick up the dead hogs, and we had to vaccinate the remainder. Grabbing and holding on to 100 pound hog by a hind leg while another guy gave him the shot was some kind of a work out. The hogs eventually stopping dying, and I lost my ass.

One year I purchased a bunch of Red Duroc pigs to feed out. I fed them on an enclosed concrete slab. No exercise. When they reached 200 pounds a few of them laid down and died. I called the vet who came out to the farm, examined the dead hogs and told me that the hogs had died of heart attacks brought on by too much fat and no exercise. The pay off was when I sold the hogs to Hormel in Austin and was docked because the hogs were too fat.

And when there was wet hay or wet corn to be bought, I was the mullett (a fish that's easy to catch) with my mouth wide open ready to be reeled in. When my four year sentence was up, I happily left Iowa to the cheers of all who knew me.