What a day….. To start the day off my mind was blown at 4K Farms and to finish the day my feet are shot from cruising around the Omaha Zoo. Long day!
In the morning we headed out to 4K Farms. 4K Farms is a large show pig production farm. This is the home of Hillbilly Bone, one of the top show boars used nation wide. We started the tour off by watching a semen collection demonstration that was followed by a breeding demonstration. After we toured different pig barns on the farm. We started with week old piglets in farrowing crates then moved to the growing barns where the piglets are weaned from their moms and started on grain diets. Next we saw the finishing barns but we were only allowed to look inside this barn, not step foot inside due to the recent pig transmitted diseases that are hitting the pig industry lately. I thought the visit to 4K Farms was very interested and I learned a lot about pig breeding. Pig breeding seems to be much less labor in comparison to breeding cattle by hand. Overall I thought the tour was fun and the quality of genetics at 4K Farms made the visit that much better because we were looking at some of the best swine genetics in the industry. Their breeding stock was very impressive!
We then drove about an hour to Omaha, Nebraska. We had a free day at the Omaha Zoo! The Omaha Zoo was huge! There was a very cool desert and swamp exhibit. We even saw some beavers. GO BEAVS! They didn’t seem to care about are excitement though.. Rhinos and giraffes are always really fun to see, but the zoo was under some construction so they didn’t have any elephants or zebras. Bummer!
I still enjoyed walking around to all the different animals, but I’m even more excited about sitting in the hotel room writing this blog.Only two days left of the first Midwest Ag Tour. Time sure goes by fast when you are having fun!
Until we meet again.
