Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Boar Cart

This is a CONTACT-O-MAX™ boar cart, used to move a boar in front of a sow (in a crate), for heat checking. In a modern farm, the sows are in crates. To see if they need to get AI, you move a boar in front of them, like in this Spanish farm where they raise Iberico sows in crates:

They aren't using a boar cart, so things will take more or less time, depending on the cooperation of the boar. With a boar cart, they'd start the boar at the wall and move him across the row of sows. They'd heat-check the sows and mark down the ones needing AI. Then they'd come back and AI them.

The boar cart really shows how automated meat production has become. I suspect on day we'll do away with the animals altogether and just have machines produce meat for us.

2 comments:

cw said...

"I suspect on day we'll do away with the animals altogether and just have machines produce meat for us."

To be quite honest, for everyday non-artesianal meat production, I'm not averse to the idea. Our deli meat is processed beyond recognition as it is. It'd certainly be more resource friendly and (hopefully) offer less environmental issues for the mass scale factory farms.

Heath Putnam said...

It will be very funny to have vat meat manufacturers arguing that they produce tasty protein with the concomitant animal exploitation.

Non-dairy creamer companies don't make those arguments right now, despite the fact that producing milk in a modern dairy requires "stealing" milk wholesale from young animals, and artificially sentencing milk cows to unnaturally long periods of lactation, where the only benefits flow to the humans.