Day 088 - 13 Feb 95 - Page 30
1 A. Yes, he does.
2
3 Q. Do you train your stockmen?
4 A. Yes, we do.
5
6 Q. Do you train them for all stages of a pig's life?
7 A. Yes, we do.
8
9 Q. Will you have somebody in attendance when the sow in her
10 farrowing arc is having her piglets?
11 A. If there are difficulties, yes, but normally they are
12 allowed to farrow by their own natural means.
13
14 Q. How does a pig in a farrowing ark in a field, how does she
15 go about having her piglets? What does she do?
16 A. When the in-pig sows are coming to their time to give
17 birth, they will be put in a paddock where there is the
18 insulated arcs, and they will then select themselves which
19 arc they will pig down or farrow in. Occasionally, there
20 are problems. Sometimes you will have two sows choose to
21 go into one arc. So, then the pig man, he then has to use
22 his expertise in persuading the sow to remain in one arc
23 for the benefit of the youngsters.
24
25 Q. Is there a tendency for a sow to damage her piglets in some
26 way after they have been born?
27 A. It has been known for sows to eat their piglets.
28
29 Q. Eat them?
30 A. Yes. It is a well-known fact that if the sow -- I am
31 talking specifically outside now -- if she roots her nest
32 too deep in the arc that the young piglets as they are born
33 will roll underneath her and they will in turn then,
34 unfortunately, be suffocated.
35
36 Q. What can you do to prevent that from happening?
37 A. Well, that is to the stockman's discretion. One way of
38 preventing that is to put a ring in their nose. That is,
39 if a stockman does have that problem, that is what he does.
40
41 Q. How does the ring work? It goes through the nose?
42 A. It goes through the front of the nose, sir, like this.
43
44 Q. One sees some human beings adorned in that manner. It goes
45 through the front of the nose and then there is a string or
46 a rope on it, is there, or something?
47 A. Oh, no, no, no.
48
49 Q. No?
50 A. No, no. Just a ring so that when she puts down it is
51 a -----
52
53 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What, it stops her digging too deep, do you
54 mean?
55 A. It will not prevent her rooting, sir, but because she
56 has the feeling of the ring, we believe, in the nose as
57 being something that is unusual, she will not use her nose
58 so much.
59
60 MR. RAMPTON: We talked about tail biting a little earlier,
