CCHS ag class raises pigs

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

One section of one of the ag rooms at Charles City High School is temporarily going to be a little pig farm for a few weeks.

It’s home for a big sow — possibly named Roxanne — and a dozen of her piglets.

It’s all part of an Animal Science Class at Charles City High School. There are 22 students in the class, and Charles City ag teacher Bret Spurgin said there are a handful of them who raise pigs at home, but a majority of them live in town.

“We’ve all already learned that the sow gets upset when you try to handle her pigs,” Spurgin said.

The sow and the 12 piglets came from the Iowa Learning Center at the Iowa State Fair. Iowa Pork Producers sent an email out at the beginning of the summer, to see if any FFA or school ag programs were interested, and Spurgin responded.

“I said, ‘Yep, we’d like to have one,’ then we scrambled around and found a place to keep them,” Spurgin said. “We’re going to keep them here for a few weeks, then we have a farm we’re going to take them to, not far from school, and there the kids will continue to care for them.”

The students seemed excited about the class.

“I think it will be really cool,” said junior Joey Heidebrink, who lives in town. “I’ve been around animals, though, and I understand the process, but there’s a lot of people who’ve never been around any of that. It’s really good to learn those things.”

Jace Lendt, also a junior, lives on a farm and has raised a lot of animals — though not pigs.

“It’s a lot of the same things for me at the moment, until we get to the shots and castration,” Lendt said. “It’s a lot more variety for people, so they can see a lot of things outside of the classroom, and see what goes on at farms.”

One of the things that goes on at farms that the city kids will have to get used to — the cute little piglets will one day be made into bacon, pork chops and tenderloins.

“The first thing I said about this project is to remember that these animals are production animals — they’re meant to provide food,” Spurgin said.

He said that despite his warnings, it’s entirely possible that some of the students will get attached to the cute little critters.

“If they get attached, well that’s part of it,” he said.

Spurgin said that most farmers at one time or another do get attached to an animal.

“And that’s good. It shows that the farmers and producers care about the animals, and care about raising them the correct way,” Spurgin said. “Part of all of that is knowing at the end of the day what their purpose is.”

The first step toward getting too attached to livestock is giving the animals individual names. So far, none of the students have named any of the piglets, and although Spurgin has just been calling the sow “Mama,” some students said that they were going to call her “Roxanne.”

The piglets were born two weeks ago on Aug. 13, and Spurgin said they will be weaned in a couple of weeks, then vaccinated and tagged, then the boars will be castrated. In 5-6 months the pigs will be ready for slaughter.

In the meantime, Roxanne will get back to work making more pigs.

“We will rebreed this sow this fall, so she farrows again in the winter for the kids to have some projects to take to the fair,” Spurgin said.