Change is, well, in the air, as pig-related teaching and research activities are moving from the historic old wooden hog barn on the central campus to a sleek new $2.4 million facility out near the airport.
Tucked between the Crocker Nuclear Lab and Academic Surge, the old hog barn has been the subject of debate for years. Built in 1913, the two-story barn is to some people a quaint reminder of the campus’s agricultural roots. To others, particularly residents of downwind buildings, it’s simply an odoriferous nuisance.
Relocating the swine facility became imperative two years ago when construction of Engineering 3 just northwest of the hog barn required removal of several outdoor pigpens. A home for a new swine facility was found on the west side of Hopkins Road, just north of the beef cattle feed lot.
About 1,100 pigs are raised at the hog barn each year for teaching and research purposes. The barn is a crucial research facility for animal-science faculty members like Trish Berger, who studies the molecular basis of fertilization in pigs, and Jim Murray, who is doing research on gene transfer in pigs.
Furthermore, some 600 students, many of them undergraduate animal-science majors, take courses that make use of the facility. Veterinary students also train at the barn, learning to provide medical care for pigs.
Most of the pigs are eventually bound for slaughter, but many are provided to the school of medicine for research and surgical training. Because they are so anatomically similar to humans, pigs serve as good models for human medicine.
"Pigs are the original couch potatoes," said Kent Parker, who has managed the facility for the past 18 years. He notes that campus-raised pigs are particularly docile because they are used to frequent visitors.
Despite their malodorous reputation, pigs are actually rather fastidious animals and quite bright, according to Parker and the four students who live and work at the hog barn. They point out that the animals always select a corner of their pen far from their feeding trough as a dung spot and only roll in mud to cool themselves.
"People don’t understand pigs at all," said Kristin Griesbach, an animal-science major who raised pigs in 4-H before coming to UC Davis. "People think pigs are dirty and smelly, but they’re really smart."
Griesbach and fellow students Amber Steinhauer and Abbi Bennett joined returning hog-barn resident Rhonda Rhoades this fall, living in the small apartment on the upper level of the barn. The students feed and care for the animals, and learn basic herd-management skills. They jokingly note that their friends don’t seem to be coming around as often since they’ve taken up residence at the hog barn, but they wouldn’t trade their barn experience.
Max Rothschild, a UC Davis alum and now a professor at Iowa State University, echoes their sentiments. During the early 1970s, Rothschild recalls he was a long-haired "city kid" from Southern California who came across the hog barn as he walked to chemistry class. Intrigued by the pigs, he signed up for the Little "I" livestock show and soon found himself showing a pig named Gwen.
As a sophomore, Rothschild talked then herdsman Jim Moore into giving him a job at the hog barn. One of his more odious jobs was to take a fire hose and wash out several pigpens that were in two poorly ventilated semi-trailers behind the barn.
He recalls timing that chore to coincide with with the chlorination of a friend’s swimming pool. Hopping a double-decker bus, he would ride out to the friend’s home and swim until the chlorine removed the stench of the pigpens.
As a freshman, Rothschild also worked on a research project with the late animal-science professor Hubert Heitman, who did extensive research on the nutrition of pigs. Rothschild’s job was to observe how long it took for individual piglets to find a particular teat on the sow.
"I learned my first lesson in data collection," recalled Rothschild ruefully. "I left my lab book on the fence post and the sow ate it."
Despite the smell and the lost lab book, he has fond memories of his hog-barn years.
"I learned a lot about pigs working at the swine barn, and it probably really shaped my career," he said.
Today, Rothschild is coordinator of the national Swine Genome Mapping Project, focused on mapping the entire genome of the pig and identifying genes responsible for economically important traits such as growth, reproduction and meat quality.
Rothschild’s story is not unusual, according to Gary Anderson, chair of the Animal Science Department, who lists other alumni whose experience at the hog barn led to successful careers in academia or industry.
"This really is the end of an era and for many of us it’s a little sad," said Anderson of the closure of the old barn. "But the new swine facility with its modern equipment offers tremendous opportunities for faculty, students and staff."
The new facility includes a long covered outdoor pen and a barn. The west end of the pen-building will house pigs ranging from young 40-pounders up to mature pigs weighing 200 pounds or more. The east wing of the building will accommodate the boars and mature sows for breeding.
The stainless-steel pens have concrete floors with alleys that will be automatically flushed with water each day to remove dung.
"We’re going to spend less time on mundane things and more time on animal work," said facility manager Kent Parker, who assisted in designing the new facility.
Inside the 9,000-square-foot barn-building will be two farrowing, or birthing, rooms and two nursery rooms where piglets can be kept with their mothers until old enough to be moved to the outdoor pens.
The new barn also includes a classroom, laboratory, office, break room, and storage and work areas, plus two apartments for the barn’s student residents.
An entirely new herd is being bred at the facility, starting with 131 pigs, including 80 sows, being shipped in from Kentucky. The animals are all being donated by the Pig Improvement Co. whose world headquarters are in Berkeley.
Sometime between now and the first of the year, the doors will swing shut for the last time on the old hog barn, and the four student residents will join the growing herd at the new facility. Taking care to not to spread any latent soil-borne diseases to the new herd, which is certified as disease-free, the students will hose off not only their boots, but also their cars.
The old barn, built 87 years ago, is the oldest building on campus still being used for its original purpose. Because of its age and shingle-sided University Farm-era architecture, it will be preserved, although a new use for it has not yet been determined, according to campus planners. Parker assures potential new residents that the infamous odor will not linger in the barn itself.
And as for the new barn, will nearby residents of other Hopkins Road buildings soon be pinching their noses? Not so, says Parker, thanks to the new facility’s automated waste removal systems.
"Most people won’t even know we’re here," he said confidently.
And for a hog barn, perhaps that is the highest compliment.