NEW HAMPSHIRE — For Keaton Fetter, it is all about bringing home the bacon at his finishing farm near New Hampshire. Literally.
The farm is the home of 2,400 sows. The farm is a finishing farm, meaning they are used for meat.
“Everyone likes bacon and pork chops,” Fetter said.
The facility is actually leased to Kalmbach Swine Management. Fetter rents the facility and takes care of the maintenance. Before a pig is brought to the facility, it is placed temporarily in another building to check on its health.
“Every morning they are checking on a pig’s health,” Fetter said. “Once it appears the pig is healthy, they are brought here.”
The heat cycles for the pigs are also checked and calendared so they can be artificially inseminated when it is time. A pig’s gestation period is three months, three weeks and three days, and now is a particularly busy time of the year.
“We just started in February, and many are being inseminated,” Fetter said. “Come May or June, there will be a lot of pigs giving birth.”
Expectant mothers are held in a separate nursery room, where the piglets can be weaned before being sold.
After each day, the entire facility is disinfected.
“It is cleaned to the point that even the tools are disinfected,” Fetter said.
To ensure health, there is very little contact with the outside world other than the workers.
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