But that was before Oklahoma was invaded by a plague of pigs that devour crops, uproot pastures, destroy wildlife habitats, spread disease to humans and animals, kill trees and even knock over cemetery stones.

“I started trapping them more or less in self-defence,” said Vich, 60, a livestock farmer in northeast Oklahoma. “They were tearing up my place.”

Oklahoma is battling a wild pig problem that has spread across the United States. The pigs, evolved from introduced wild boars or from escaped domestic stock, are prevalent in 36 states and have been sighted in 47 states, according to authorities who track their populations.

They are vicious critters that typically grow to 200 pounds, can run 30 miles per hour, jump three feet high and climb out of traps with walls up to six feet high, experts say.

“They are the ultimate survivors,” said John Mayer, manager of the environmental science group at the Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, South Carolina. “They can live pretty much anywhere, eat pretty much anything, they don’t have enough predators and they reproduce faster than any other mammal.”

They seldom appear in the daytime making them hard to count, but Mayer estimates there are 5.5 million feral pigs nationwide. There could be up to eight million, up from a maximum two million in 1990, he said.

Desperate measures

State and local authorities are increasingly desperate to stop their advance. Trapping and shooting are the primary means of eliminating wild pigs, but researchers are also trying to develop poisons and birth control to control the population.

Some states such as Texas have even authorized hunting from helicopters.

“They are here to stay and it’s going to take a huge, concerted effort to get the numbers under control,” said Russell Stevens, a wildlife and fisheries consultant for the Oklahoma-based Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation.

The federal government is joining the pig purge. The Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is preparing a national feral swine plan. President Barack Obama has proposed $20 million in his proposed 2014 budget for the plan, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials have said.

Most feral swine give birth starting at six to 12 months and have litters of six to 12 piglets twice a year, Mayer said.

Families of pigs have repeatedly used their powerful, plow-like snouts to uproot the hayfields on Nancy Bond’s farm in northeast Oklahoma. They eat roots and grubs, destroying fields and making them lumpy and hard to work in, she said.

Chad Hibbs, caretaker of the Mayes County Deer Ranch near Locust Grove in Oklahoma, pointed to soybean fields shredded by feasting wild hogs and to deer feeders scraped and battered by pigs.

Hunters exacerbated the problem in many states by catching and releasing pigs so they could pursue them, spreading them to more areas. States such as Oklahoma have made releasing pigs illegal and Kansas in 2006 banned hunting of wild pigs altogether.

Vicious animals

Vich, the pig trapper, showed a large trap on a remote part of his farm that resembles a livestock pen but is rigged with wires along the ground. He baits the trap with corn in hopes the pigs will trip the wire and slam the door behind them.

A mechanical engineer by training, Vich said he has trapped hogs for five or six years and sometimes nabs nine to 12 pigs at a time, which he loads into a livestock trailer and takes home to sell to neighbours for meat.

“They are not happy when they get trapped and they are very vicious,” Vich said. “They would hurt you in a heartbeat if they got the chance.”

Pigs are wandering into urban areas, damaging lawns and parks and being hit by cars, said Billy Higginbotham, professor and wildlife and fisheries specialist for the Texas A&M University Extension Service.

Pigs were introduced into the continental United States in 1539 in what is now Florida and used as a travelling food source by explorers, said Higginbotham. Most wild pigs evolved from domestic pigs that escaped into the wild prior to the 1930s, said the Noble Foundation’s Stevens.

Texas is the most pig-plagued state, with an estimated 2.9 million in 2011, Higginbotham said. They are present in all but one of the state’s 254 counties. Florida is second and California third, according to Stevens.

Dale Nolte, the man at the U.S. Department of Agriculture charged with drawing up a plan to stop the pig pestilence, is blunt about the objective.

“In states with emerging populations of feral swine, our goal is to eliminate them,” Nolte said. 

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This is not your ordinary elementary school. It is the Walton Rural Life Center, a kindergarten through fourth grade charter school in rural Kansas that uses agriculture to teach students about math, science, economics — and responsibility.

The farm theme is so popular that the centre has a waiting list to enrol and has given the town of Walton, population 235, a boost, said Mayor Evan Johnson.

“It’s been a priority for us and a source of pride,” Johnson said.

Students take turns each week feeding chickens, sheep, pigs and cattle. They wash and sell the eggs, make yarn from sheep wool and raise pigs for market — with pork coming back to the school for meals. They also raise vegetables for school snacks.

“The kids love it, and they are learning,” said principal Natise Vogt, pointing to better test scores as one example.

At a time when many small towns struggle to keep their schools open due to shrinking enrolment, Walton is turning students away for lack of space. In 2007, enrolment dipped to around 100, putting the school at risk of closing, Vogt said. But the school has 168 students today.

About half the students come from outside the school’s enrolment boundaries and some live outside the school district, which is based five miles away, in Newton, Kansas.

“The parents like the unique curriculum, the project-based learning,” said Jennifer Sauerwein, co-president of the school’s Parent-Teacher Association. “The kids get that real-life, hands-on, day-to-day connection to learning.”

Practical math

Working with animals, for example, is a study in math because students count out eggs in dozens, add and subtract money earned and spent, measure animal food in fractions of each container and equate perimeter lengths with animal pens.

Feeding the animals is not just a chore, said Walton teacher Amanda Paulus.

“It gives them a lot of responsibility in that they are actually caring for something that depends on them,” Paulus said.

The first 20 minutes of the school day is spent tending to the animals. About 16 students do the work each morning on a rotating schedule while the rest take a walk outdoors to prepare their minds and bodies for the day, Vogt said. On weekends, teachers take turns going to the school to feed the animals.

Walton students also learn about recycling, composting and reducing waste. One class went through the school trash for five days and discovered that too much of it consisted of paper towels. So, now there is a sign above every dispenser urging students to use only two paper towels.

A wind turbine generates power for the school’s greenhouse.

“The kids become more interested in science and the environment and the planet Earth and what we can do to make this a better place,” said second- grade teacher Staci Schill.

National attention

The Walton school’s success drew the attention of the U.S. Department of Education, which produced an eight-minute online video about the school, helping to draw visitors from around the country, Vogt said.

Walton Rural Life Center is one of 17 charter schools in Kansas and one of only two elementary schools that is ag based, the other being a small kindergarten through eighth grade school in Oswego, Kansas.

A charter school gets autonomy from certain school district rules so that it can pursue unique courses of study while still having to meet state education standards. An advisory board monitors the charter school’s performance.

Since Walton became a charter school, its test scores have risen, Vogt said. For three years straight, 100 per cent of students have tested at proficient or above in state assessment tests, she said.

One measure of the school’s success is how the students fare after advancing to other schools in fifth grade, Vogt said.

“The teachers tell us they can always tell Walton kids because they are respectful and know what they need to know, so we feel we are doing our job,” Vogt said.

The kindergarten wait list for next year has 35 students, but Walton has room for only 20, Vogt said.

Set up as alternatives to traditional public schools, charter schools typically operate under private management and often boast small class sizes, innovative teaching styles or a particular academic focus. But while they are operated privately, they are publicly funded.

Nationally, the number of charter schools has more than tripled since 1999 and stood at 5,618 in the 2011-12 academic year, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. They represent 5.8 per cent of all public schools.

Only 15 per cent of all charter schools in the United States are classified as rural, but the numbers are growing faster than for urban schools, according to the alliance.

Their record of student achievement is mixed, with some — such as the Kansas farm school — boasting good test scores while others do no better than public schools or worse, according to national studies.

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U.S. slaughter of horses ended in 2007 when Congress, at the urging of animal rights groups, halted funding to inspect processing plants. The unintended result was thousands of horses abandoned or neglected, and even more enduring hundreds of miles of travel to Mexico and Canada for slaughter.

After a government report last year detailed the abuses of horses, Congress restored inspection money to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for this year.

"People are giving away horses every day because they can’t sell them," said Wayne White, president of the Missouri Equine Council. "All the rescue places are over-populated."

Horse meat is sold for human consumption in China, Russia, Mexico and other foreign countries, according to Unified Equine, a Wyoming company proposing to open a horse-slaughter plant at Rockville, Missouri. Horse meat is also used for zoo animals.

The proposed plant, at a facility previously used for cattle processing in Rockville, has strong support in the community. But animal rights advocates have not given up the fight.

"Americans are revolted by horse slaughter, it’s cruelty they just don’t want to support," said Lindsay Rajt of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

In a report last year, the Government Accountability Office documented an increase in horse neglect and abuse since slaughtering ended and found that by 2010 nearly 138,000 horses were being sent annually to Mexico and Canada for slaughter.

According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, federally and provincially inspected meat plants in Canada alone slaughtered 89,348 horses in 2011 — up slightly from 89,034 in 2010 but well down from the 113,064 slaughtered in 2008.

Canada in 2011 exported 13,489 tonnes of horse meat, mainly to Belgium, France and Switzerland among other nations. Total 2011 horsemeat exports were down from 17,766 tonnes in 2010 and 20,912 tonnes in 2008.

Unified Equine hopes to open its slaughtering plant in September at Rockville, about 140 km south of Kansas City, followed by one in Hermiston, Ore. Another company, Valley Meats, intends to open a plant at Roswell, N.M.

The Missouri and New Mexico plants both requested U.S. Department of Agriculture inspections, according to the agency’s Food Safety and Inspection Service. But "a significant amount of time" will be required to update inspection procedures, the service said in a statement Wednesday.

Even though Congress restored funding, the appropriations committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, which allocates how money is spent, again withdrew money for horse slaughter inspections in the fiscal 2013 budget. The proposal still would have to be approved by the full House and Senate.

Equine chief executive Sue Wallis said she has heard of people in 18 states and several Native American tribal areas exploring horse slaughter plants.

"Everyone else’s solution"

Residents of Rockville, a town of about 150 people, turned out in force at a meeting last month to support the new plant, said Mayor Dave Moore.

"I don’t know of anyone (in town) who is not for it," said Dennis Heiman, operator of a grain elevator that has been Rockville’s largest employer since 60 jobs were lost with the closing of the beef plant two years ago. The horse plant is expected to create 50 jobs.

Owners of rescue ranches see the problem of neglected and abused horses first-hand. The Changing Leads Equine Rescue ranch just outside Kansas City is at its capacity of eight unwanted horses, said Tina Weidmaier, president of the all-volunteer organization.

Joe Black, a draft horse, was 700 pounds underweight by the time it was rescued from a pasture last August, Weidmaier said. Its owners moved to Florida and left it alone to graze for nearly a year, she said. He is back to his healthy weight but has a chewing disorder, she said.

Many people abandon or seek to give away their horses because of the cost, said Ericka Caslin, director of the Unwanted Horse Coalition. A horse costs an average of about US$2,600 annually to feed and board, not counting veterinary bills, she said.

There are an estimated 170,000 unwanted horses in the United States, Caslin said, yet her group has no position on slaughtering plants. Neither does its parent group, the American Horse Council in Washington nor do some rescue ranches, such as Changing Leads.

"We’d rather focus on the problem than on everyone else’s solution," Weidmaier said.

Animal rights advocate Rajt said the number of unwanted horses going to slaughter is fueled by racehorse or rodeo breeders who dispose of dozens of animals not deemed "the next big winner." Horse slaughter and the shipping of horses to Mexico and Canada should be banned because it is cruel, she said.

But Wallis of Unified Equity said banning horse slaughter or shipment for slaughter would put well over 100,000 more horses per year at risk of abandonment, abuse and a slow death.

"It’s hard to imagine the magnitude of that," Wallis of Equine said. "It would be an unmitigated disaster."

— Kevin Murphy is a writer and Reuters contributor in the Kansas City area. Includes files from AGCanada.com staff.

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