Animalia

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo at n+1:

DURING THE DAY, the pig units become like furnaces, and they barely cool down at night. Pigs are unable to sweat and have difficulty regulating their body temperature.

Since they cannot wallow in mud, they sprawl listlessly in their own excrement, panting in distress. The men get up at daybreak, refill the drinking troughs, hose down the animals. They throw open the doors of the pig sheds in the hope that a through breeze might drive away the humidity and the stench, but this means they have deal with the blowflies and horseflies that swarm in and hov­er in clouds over the stalls, clustering around every orifice of the pigs. Before the sun has even risen, they are forced to fold doors.

The sons rake droppings from under the slatted floors and push the slurry into the drainage channels. The pig sheds are two thousand square meters, and the stalls are two meters by three, each containing between five to seven pigs shitting and wallowing in their excreta.

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