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.

Gee, I wish you could too. I'd love a chance to meet you.....maybe some other time. Hope others get a chance to come. Several of these places are really nice. And it's a first for the Rusk area.

BLTs are one of those things, I can take 'em or leave 'em. I never found them to be overly satisfying. Nice snack, yes, something with something else, yes and when you do it, do it right. Lots of bacon! I have been eating a lot of grilled cheese with bacon sandwiches lately. Got a great deal on some fabulous bacon and haven't had grilled cheese for a long time. Tonight I had turkey & swiss on lightly buttered multigrain toast with some mac salad and cole slaw. Refreshing on this warm, humid day.

Welcome, Mushcreek. I won't talk about my [ahem] renovation, other than it moves forward very slowly. I miss my dog, which is why I think I have deer running rampant over everything I've ever planted. Talking about that is why I'm here. OMG YAK. I made this concoction out of recipes I saw online for spraying for deer. A bottle of hot sauce A small bottle of homemade garlic wine An egg Vegetable oil Hing powder (that asdosopholoius or whatever powder I think renee uses PUKE STINK YAK KILL ME NOW AWFUL stuff) Water I put it in a milk jug and shook the crap out of it. Put it in a squirt bottle and proceeded to squirt my 3 acres. OMG IT'S HORRIBLE and of course, my sprayer quit unless I unscrewed it and just held it in the bottle. WHY, OMG WHY!?! Anyway, the egg is supposed to become stinky, the hing powder will chase away a Mongol hoard, and the hot sauce is supposed to deter those evil rabbits. I did almost step on a softball-sized box turtle today. Cutie patootie. :) I didn't spray him. I'm now taking a shower because the spray drift is going to cause me to kill myself. I'd rather have month-old B.O., garlic and Doritos breath, swim-in-a-sewage treatment pool naked smell than that HING powder. No wonder I don't like Indian ah, er, "cuisine." It's not just the fact I hate beans and cauliflower, it's that GOD AWFUL HING POWDER. Next time I'll tell you how I really feel.