Day 6

Today we visited 4K Farms and the Omaha Zoo!
I would say that 4K Farms was one of my favorite tours. I don’t know a lot about pigs so it was very informational for me AND I got to hold a piglet (my first time) so that’s pretty hard for the other tours to compete with. But more than just that, my favorite part of this tour was the man who owns the company and showed us around, Kirk Swanson. Kirk has been in the business for many years and really knows what he’s doing and wants to teach others. His passion and work ethic was extremely inspiring to me and I am so glad we got the opportunity to meet him. His operation is very successful and is home to the famous boar, Hillbilly Bone. On this tour we got to see the entire process; from collecting semen from a boar to artificially inseminating a sow to piglets only a few days old to just weaned, growing and finishing.

Kirk showed us some of his younger boars and showed us a boar named Hillbilly Hilton which he named after his best friend who’s last name was Hilton.Kirk said one of his struggles was finding good workers. In his experience, finding someone who will work hard and give it their all even if they have little experience will almost be his first choice of an employee. As he said, you can’t fix lazy.

This tour was a great experience and I really appreciated it.

After the farm we headed to the zoo! Let me just say, Omaha Zoo is quite impressive. There set ups and environments were really cool. Inside this giant dome that you could walk around in for hours. First was the desert which I wasn’t a huge fan of but then it went into other areas that were imitating different climates. My favorite was probably the swamp area. Mostly because we got to see a cute little beaver swimming around. Other animals we saw were the orangutans reaching out to people asking for treats, lions and tigers and polar bears oh my! Rhinos, giraffes, sea lions, birds, butterflies, and tons of others. I’d say their aquarium wasn’t nearly as good as ours back home but we’re a little closer to the ocean.

This was a super fun day and we all got to let loose and just hang out at the zoo which was so nice!

We also saw where Oregon State baseball won the national championship many years ago. The original field and stadium was torn down but this smaller version was put in.