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Research Examining Stress Hormone Levels in Hair Expected to Interest Breeding Companies

An international research effort which is looking at the potential of measuring hormone levels in the hair of pigs to identify genetic lines that will be less affected by stress is expected to be of particular interest to breeding companies.
Researchers with Iowa State University, the Universities of Saskatchewan and Alberta and CDPQ are collaborating on a project under which the levels of three stress hormones in the hair of pigs are being measured to evaluate the effect of stress on performance and on disease resilience.
Dr. Jack Dekkers, a distinguished professor in the Department of Animal Science at Iowa State University and the Principal Investigator, says, by correlating the levels of stress hormones in the hair to growth performance and disease resilience, it should be possible to identify genetic lines of pigs that will be more or less affected by stress.

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We Let Dad Drive a 50,000 Pound Dump Truck

Video: We Let Dad Drive a 50,000 Pound Dump Truck



There's old hog barns under that field now. The old hog barn site on the farm has been sitting there for decades, and this is the week it finally came out: concrete pad, burn pile, charred lumber, all of it loaded into a CAT 725C rock truck and buried in a pit we dug back in the timber.

Tork's been waiting his whole life to drive one of these, so he gets the keys to a 50,000 pound rock truck and I ride shotgun. The excavator loads, the dozer clears the timber, the drone shows the whole site from above, and by sundown there's nothing left of the old place but a smooth patch of dirt. It's a weird feeling erasing something that was here before either of us, but the farm has to keep moving.