Farmer Focus: Mothering duties turn the heat up

Well, what a difference a month makes. Last time I wrote it was trying to snow and now it’s a heatwave and our outdoor pigs are needing wallows.

Adapting to change continues to be the main driver of success and ensuring problem-free pigs.

That said, it’s very difficult to keep a consistent temperature in straw yards. The key is to be flexible.

Nothing is a given and set rules as to when to open doors and when to close them do not work.

See also: Read more from our Livestock Farmer Focus writers

We are just filling up our slatted building and I’m unsure how the building is going to cope with the high temperatures.

Being new to slats it will be a case of monitoring the day and night temperatures and adjusting so that we can try to keep it fairly consistent.

Ideally, we would run the building at around 20 degrees but we may have to increase this if the day time is much warmer to try to stop a big difference between night and day.

New staff member

Since I last wrote, I have become a mum. I had a little girl, Aggie, three weeks ago and so life has changed dramatically.

I’m very lucky to be surrounded by family and a strong team who are allowing me to come and go as I can, with Aggie in tow.

She has already attended an educational day at which my sisters and I talked about pigs. This year there were 1,600 children from Hull and the surrounding areas. The children loved to see the animals and machinery and asked some very good questions.

Aggie is certainly a very lucky girl as farm life will surround her every day; some of the visiting town children had never seen cows, pigs or other animals before.

I strongly believe that the lifestyle I’ve grown up with is the best and hopefully she is a farmer in the making – or a vet, if her dad has any influence.

Kate Morgan and family farm 1,700 sows indoors in East Yorkshire and 1,200 outdoor in North Yorkshire, taking all the progeny through to slaughter. Follow Kate Morgan on Twitter or katemorgan25@hotmail.com.