Swine Club hears presentation about feed

MEEKER | In the April meeting, the White River Swine Club talked about how much feed costs, who sells it and where to get it. Todd Morris, our leader, showed us how to look at our pig’s ear notches to figure out what litter they come from. If you look at a pig from the front, the litter number will be on the left and the pig’s number in the litter will be on the right. Each time you get a pig, 4-H members must sign an county of origin paper. It shows what the breed is, where you purchased the pig, when the pig was born and what the parent’s name was.
Todd also told us that if we purchased our pigs this early, we need to keep them on straw, not sawdust. Because straw keeps them warm and cozy when sawdust keeps them cool. The feeder show will be May 4 from 5-7 p.m. You must attend the feeder show to get ear tags. Anyone may weigh their pigs in at the feeder show, but it is not mandatory. There will not be a showmanship class this year.
Our February meeting was about the feeder show and to see if we wanted to have a livestock jackpot. What we discussed was if you want to bring your pigs to get weighed at the feeder show, you may. We also talked about what you want to look for in a pig while picking them out. You want to watch how it walks, how big of feet it has, how square its shoulders are, if it has a wide chest, if it has a wide stance, and if it keeps its head up high while walking. Next, we talked about what you need to set up your pen up for pigs. You need to have feed in one corner, the water in another corner, a hut in another corner, put the poop in a place so they will always poop in that place, you always want to keep them cool during the day, and to never make mud holes when you are wetting their pens down. The last thing we talked about in our meeting was how to keep up with shots. You must keep the lot number, the date you used it, who gave you the medicine and you must keep a health record.
In February, we also picked our officers for the pig club. Trey Morris is our president, Nate Walsh for vice president, Aubrey Walsh as secretary, Taylor Nielsen as the treasurer, Taylor Morris as reporter and all the first-year members as our pledge leaders. We discussed what we have in our bank account. As we started planning our jackpot, we had to decide what we were going to do for the 4-H carnival and what were were going to do for our annual swine feeder show. As a group, we decided that we wanted to go to the fairgrounds. We are going to put ear tags on the pigs. Each person must give a presentation about what kind of breed their pig is, how much feed you are feeding them per day, and how many bags of feed you would give them each day.
This year, we have started out great and we plan to keep it that way.
– Taylor Morris, reporter