Penn State’s purebred Yorkshire hogs also are sought after as breeding stock. Swine herd manager Dave Hosterman fields phone calls throughout the year to sell more than 125 pigs to breeders.

The Swine Research Center, nestled behind the indoor and outdoor track facilities off Porter Road, restricts visitors and tours. Anyone who enters a swine building must don protective coveralls and rubber boots. If a visitor has been to another hog farm in the previous 48 hours, he or she must take a shower and put on new underwear, coveralls, and boots provided by Penn State.

“These precautions are what animal producers call ‘biosecurity measures,’” Hosterman explains. “We have to make sure that no infectious diseases enter these buildings.” The two most dreaded swine diseases are pseudorabies, which requires a producer to euthanize the entire herd if animals are infected, and porcine reproductive respiratory syndrome (PRRS), which causes abortions and other reproductive problems.

The swine center occupies about 35 acres, although most of the hogs are housed in the complex’s three buildings. About 50 hogs are kept on 25 one-acre lots outside. They consume about 6,000 bushels of corn per year, with the remainder of the feed supplied by a local mill. Hosterman sends about 150 hogs per year to the meats lab, where students use them for slaughter courses, carcass evaluation classes, and for the college’s meats-judging team. “The meat is sold to the public at regular meat sales every Friday at the lab,” Hosterman says.

Penn State’s breeding herd includes about 65 Yorkshire sows and 10 crossbred sows, small by the standards of modern agriculture. Today, a medium-sized producer will have at least 300 sows, and a large commercial operation can house 1,200 to 1,400 sows.

Hosterman has an assistant manager and a farm technician on staff, as well as five student workers, two of whom live in on-site dormitories. The hogs are used as teaching tools in swine management classes and as research animals.

Animal scientists Ken Kephart and Ron Kensinger work extensively with swine in projects such as a study to determine whether penning animals in separate areas by gender has a positive effect on animal growth. Kephart also recently coordinated a training program for extension agents, consultants, and governmental officials from across the country at the facility as part of the On-Farm Odor and Environmental Assessment Program, a federal program designed to help hog producers meet environmental management standards for odor. “The training certifies the participants to assess environmental stewardship on swine operations around the country, but primarily in their own states,” Kephart says.

Swine manure tops the olfactory charts in offensiveness, and can be a source of conflict in some rural areas. While Penn State’s facility does have a pungent aroma, the odors here are probably mild compared to a commercial swine facility. The manure produced by the herd is piped into a huge 50,000-gallon holding tank. A tanker truck, nicknamed the “honey wagon,” empties the tank about every three weeks, and then the manure is spread on University fields.

The swine center’s buildings all serve specific functions. A large, open-front building houses up to 275 adult or market hogs. The most modern structure, the farrowing building, houses sows and their litters in two rooms of 12 pens each. Nursing sows stay in these rooms for 28 days before moving to pens in the “nursery room” at the opposite end of the building. The young animals are housed in the nursery room for another 28 days, and then moved to pens in either the open-fronted building or the main building near Hosterman’s office.

“I’ve seen things come full circle concerning the animals,” says Hosterman, who started to work at the swine facility at the age of 16. “In the past, people didn’t really want to see what was going on at the Penn State animal farms. Today, we see children and grown-ups who really are interested in how things work.”

Faculty and staff referenced in this article are Mark Amsler, dairy complex manager; Dave Hosterman, swine center manager; Ken Kephart, professor of animal science; Dick Kuzemchak, sheep center manager; Pete Le Van, Haller Beef Farm manager; Don Nichols, beef center manager; and Randy Swope; animal units coordinator in dairy and animal science. Research has been funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, the Pennsylvania Pork Producers Council, and the National Pork Producers Council.