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Dear New Farm,
I am a pig farmer and I have 95 sows. I use all the Animal
Welfare Institute guidelines with one exception. I use farrowing
crates. I did not use them for the first 10 years; I thought
they might be cruel. Boy, was I wrong. Instead of carrying
out buckets of dead baby pigs, I now have a 95-98 percent
survival rate. The sow only nests when she is in labor so
it only a couple of hours until she settles down and gives
birth. They don't go crazy, they just paw a bit and get up
and down a lot, mostly to turn over. The sow can be removed
when the babies are about four days to one week old and put
in a pen or building with the babies, as they are now strong
enough to get out of the sow’s way. Newborn pigs are
very fragile and easily crushed, and it needs to be brought
to everyone’s attention that we ask the crucial question
of survival rates of babies in these ‘more natural’
systems. It seems nobody is looking at the real torture of
the infant baby pigs. Well, I for one, am going to speak on
behalf of the infant piglet and I will keep at it until somebody
listens. Thank you for your participation in the animal welfare
issue.
Sincerely,
Deanna Quan
Q-Bar Farm, SPF
Dayton, Oregon
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