Just as curiosity, have you changed feed or vitimins, feeding regimines? It can be amazing what having a little too much or not enough, minerals or vitimins can do to animals. We see problems with certain hay, grain, vitimin feeding programs in young horses. Calcium-Phosphorus balance is the most common. Alfalfa hay skews the Calcium way over, leading to tight tendons, other problems. Many people feed Alfalfa hay, lots of grain, makes for heavy weight on young bones that need different minerals. See a lot of lame young horses from poor feed choices. With the different pig breeds named, I can't point at breeding being the factor. Sometimes you get a line of related animals who have the same problems, so you point at breeding. Don't use that stallion or his relatives again. The other person mentioned a disease. Something that would be passed between pigs or a germ living in the barn, farrowing areas. Sounds like a reasonable idea to me. I am most familiar with horse problems and a couple things happen to bred mares. Rhino that causes abortions coming to mind first. All horses can carry the Rhino bugs, might give them a cold type infection, no big deal to healthy horse. Rhino causes the bred mare to often slip her foal. There is a Rhino vaccination, given at 5-7-9 months. Problem comes when giving the vaccine, because the mare can ALSO abort from the shots! Abortions from shots happen often, not always on the first or second shot either. Just really a heartbreaker to lose a foal that far along. However for the big breeder, multiple mares, they save most of the crop. They also preg check mares, palpate a couple days after shots, to ID any mare who lost a foal. Get her bred back immedialtly. Nobody TELLS the single mare breeder about problems with shot until AFTER foal is lost, "Oh yeah, abortions can happen when you do those shots". Keeping track with acquaintences, they lose more than 50% of foals when giving shots. Pretty high losses. I advise single mare owners to avoid the shots. Few of those mares are exposed to Rhino anyway, not much new horse traffic thru their barn. The other horse thing was feeding fescue grass. With the infected fescue, mare develops a very tough bag tissue holding the foal. Bag also turns red, hence the name Red-Bag Delivery. I think the foals can't get out of the bag quick enough to breath, and those who are helped, still have problems, die. One of the big warnings for bred mare owners, don't feed fescue grass/hay in the last couple months of pregnancy. Those with fescue grass, dry lot the mares in paddocks, feed hay to avoid problems. With the terribly high numbers you are having, perhaps some help is called for. Your vet should be asking questions, call the local State College, get some information coming. It may be your local problem, could be wider spread. Pig problems affect a lot of people, big money loss. When we had swine Cholera locally some years back, the State had teams of people all over the place, IMMEDIATLY. Slapped a bunch of rules into effect, regarding shipping, hygiene, selling, checking before unloading. Our local area had thousands of pigs being raised, was a major feeder pig source. The rules did prevent the spread of the disease, helped restrict the problem and loss of more pigs. You need to make some noise, get some big time help with such a serious problem. The money loss is pretty bad for you right now. Allowing a problem to spread could wipe folks right out of business. Get the vet and some of those experts we all pay for down from the College to help find the root problem, come up with the solution so the pigs are back to normal. My best wishes to you, sure hope the answers come soon.

Yes, the ragweeds bloom at the same time as the goldenrods, but have nondescript, barely visible, green flowers that produce TONS of highly allergenic wind-dispersed pollen, while the more prominent, yellow-flowered, sticky pollen goldenrods get all the blame. I also think these photos look like Phlox paniculata, and will be interested to see pictures once they're in bloom!

My mom used to be able to take a 20 minute nap, wake up refreshed and ready to go. If I happen to take a nap, I sleep for a couple of hours and wake up with no energy. I only nap when I am sick....if I am not feeling ill, a nap is an omen that some sort of infection is coming. Glad you are able to nap and wake up happy.

OMAR ! Wish you were coming to the swap, but I do have multiple white phil violets for ya !! Katherine.... keep those obedient plants and you'll have a whole huge crop of them later! They spread wonderfully! You can always put your questions on the forum for ID'ing plants, too....(I think there's one). But sometimes, especially if it's a Texas weed, it's probably most identifiable by other Texans! I have one plant in my garden that I can't ID. It looks like a dill or fennel, but I don't grow them so I don't know them. I had the same thing come up last year, but it didn't live. If it grew larger I might be able to figure it out, and welcome it, since butterflies like both. It was planted by a bird or a seed blew in on a wind, I don't know. But I like it. For now. :-)