Life in the Trenches (People & Pigs)

Maybe We Should Get to Know Each Other

My grandfather, my mother’s father, fought in the trenches of the First World War, serving in the Royal Engineers Regiment throughout the period 1914 to 1918, apart from a short convalescence after he was buried alive in a gas attack, in the Battle of Lens in 1915. I have two letters written in pencil on pages torn from an exercise book that were sent to my great-grandmother by a corporal and a sergeant who rescued my grandfather. My great-grandmother had sent a parcel of cigarettes and fruit cake to both men as a thank you for saving her son. Their replies are illuminating.

From the corporal (Cpl. J Thompson) an excerpt: “I accept your gift with thanks, but you are not indebted to me for what I have done because I firmly believe he would have done what I have done in his position. P.S. excuse my letter because I am not used to writing letters .”

From the sergeant (Sgt. A Linford) an excerpt: “Your cigarettes were very much appreciated I can assure you. What Cpl. Thompson and I did was only what was our duty, and although there was a certain amount of risk attached to it, we were fully rewarded when we found that Stan (my Grandfather) was still alive. Your letter touched me very deeply and you must allow me to thank you for being so kind as to write.”

Written in 1915 from the trenches of what we call the ‘Great War’. Today we can still reference the trenches to describe our circumstances, I wrote the above because although the analogy serves our personal experience, I acknowledge a deep respect for the incomparable, comparison.

For anyone who may read my occasional missives on LinkedIn you will know that I have worked in various sectors of the pig production for 50 years. And I would use the term ‘trenches’ to describe my circumstances throughout this time, hence the above qualification. And the opportunity to share something of the witness of humanity.

I have arrived at a point at which I can clearly see the benefit of the technologies that gather production data and monitor operational husbandry. I will never reach a definitive conclusion myself because personally, in the balance of the act creation with the process of evolution, there is a continuing generational journey towards the future. What I can say is this, I believe that we are at a pivotal moment in that journey in terms of understanding the art and craft of husbandry. A portal of understanding within the vast amount of data we have collected as an industry over the last 50 years is ‘Lifecycle Analysis’. The result of my years in the ‘trenches’ has produced Gilt Watch Together?, an attempt at pioneering in an industry that is dear to me. Its purpose is to complement the already excellent work of various proprietary pig performance recording software products in the market, to put some extra spokes in the wheel, and not to reinvent it.

My experience has been made the more valuable by the some of the people I have encountered in the industry throughout my working life so far. Their decency and generosity leaves a deep impression which it is always a joy to reflect on.

There are many clever people in our industry, I do not regard myself amongst them, but I share a little of my own story of how I arrived at this point because I think maybe we should get to know each other, and I hope others will write to us about how they arrived at today. This is because pig production is a team-based industry, and mutual collaboration is the bedrock of a successful team, to which trust is elementary. The breadth of the team is measured from the most experienced scientific mind from the supply chain to the most recent new-entrant into the husbandry team on-farm.

How I got here; I have worked in the pig production industry in a career that has taken me through commercial production (23 yrs.), genetic sales, boar production & customer service management (7 yrs.), UK pig recording start-up (14 yrs.), and independent data analyst, production strategist, and writer (9 yrs. to date).

Why lifecycle analysis?

There are several things that I learned from the very beginning of working with pigs on weekends and in school holidays from the age of 12 (1966). Some have stayed with me and still hold true today. Our instinct is slowly established by experience. One of many examples is that in 1972, as a young man, I learned from a well-respected pedigree breeder that a boar in a dam-line breeding lineage should first be considered for selection on the phenotype characteristic of his underline, looking at the number, even distribution and physical appearance of his teats. Only after this should you begin to consider other physical and indexed attributes, right up to final selection. This boar will potentially father hundreds if not thousands of parent females for commercial production. If the heritability of the trait is less than 100% then the selection based on the underline is a risk factor. In breeding-stock multiplication I saw this play out many times over the years. As a breeding-stock salesman in the 1990’s I had a multiplication unit suspended and some boars replaced because we were replacing far too many gilts sales based on the quality of the underlines being selected from this unit, the evidence was easily located underneath the offending dam-line boars. When I managed boar production for a major breeding company, I sent one of the highest ever indexed dam-line boars (in an isolation unit before being assigned to a stud) for slaughter after inspection, before informing the genetic team who had recommended him. He would have repeated the problem for the sales team. The genetic team would have me suffer the same fate as the boar. In all of this I think of the commercial producer who buys replacement genetics, and the impact of failure to capitalize what is otherwise excellent potential. Risk is something we can do far more about than we currently do. Life cycle analysis informs risk.

I managed a pig recording software market start-up in the UK of the established AgroSoft WinPig programme from 1999 to 2013. I established a customer focus disposition, replaced direct sales with annual subscription pricing, equipped pig specialist veterinary practices with a free programme with which to support their customers, transferred and consolidated many producers’ data from Dos-based systems to Windows, and later centralized everyone on a remote server when the programme moved onto a .Net system, enabling a better support service. Throughout this period, I worked closely with producers and industry on data interpretation. The experience instinctively concentrated my pigman’s heart and mind on how to bring greater understanding to the art and craft of husbandry and to improve the prospects through increased efficiencies in the 3E’s of 3Economics, 3Ethics, and 3Environmental sustainability by digging into the hidden values in existing data. All this from the perspective of working in the trenches.

Like my grandfather, I want to see the battle through if providence allows, which like him will be when I reach my own life’s natural conclusion. He served his country through the second world war in the RAF as an engineer, he worked right up until he left us all, possibly because of the lasting impact of his experience in the trenches.

I have no doubt that lifecycle analysis in animal production will lead us to new levels of economic, ethical, and environmental efficiencies. It will create new career pathways within production, and the team support opportunities for those entering our noble industry. It will bind our various disciplines more closely together.

I would like to share with you how I overcame depression that led to periods illness that took me to the edge of life almost ending my working in the industry, to which I owe so much, but for the Grace of God, and the love and support of my sweetheart of the last 46 years, and my family and friends. Maybe another day.

It is good when people take time to get to know one another, you never know, trenches are relatively narrow, and we might bump into each other.