Producers Can Now Go “Whole Hog” on New Heat Stress App for Pigs

By Jan Suszkiw USDA/ARS

HotHog, a new smartphone application (“app”) that predicts heat stress in pigs, is now available for download and use, a team of Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and university scientists recently announced.

each – leaving about an inch at the end.

Next, top the cheese with the fresh spinach and roasted peppers. Roll up the skirt steak tightly and skewer to make three pieces. Cut between the skewers to get three roulades per steak. Season the rolled up skirt steak with your favorite BBQ rub and drizzle good olive oil.

Prepare the grill for two zone or indirect grilling with the target temperature inside the grill of 350 degrees on the hot side, and the burner off on the indirect heat side. Grill 3-4 minutes on each side on the hot side then move to indirect heat. Close the cover and cook until the internal temperature is around 140 degrees. Remove them from the grill and allow to rest tented with foil for a few minutes. Brush lightly with some extra BBQ sauce with a little extra seasoning after slicing into pinwheels.

For the fresh grilled corn with compound butter, you will need one stick of high fat grass fed salted butter (I like Kerigold), 2oz. fresh minced sage, 2oz. fresh minced rosemary, 2oz fresh thyme off the stem, 2 cloves of fresh macerated garlic, 2 oz. fresh minced oregano, 8 shucked corn ears and wax paper.

Leave the butter out until it reaches room temperature, and then combine the butter, garlic and fresh herbs. Lay the butter out onto the wax paper and twist paper on each end until you have a roll. Then, place the butter in the refrigerator. Blanch the corn in boiling water for 3 minutes. Remove and shock the corn (meaning, plunging it into ice water to stop the cooking process). Grill the corn on high heat while your meat is resting. Add a nice slice of the cold compound butter and rub it into corn with a fork.

Along with the steak and corn, I like to make roasted potatoes, which are the perfect substantial side to a steak dinner. Start with thoroughly washed and dried golden baby potatoes. Toss olive oil, garlic and fresh rosemary together along with the potatoes, and then transfer to a baking sheet. In an oven preheated to 400 degrees, these potatoes should be perfectly roasted in about 20 minutes. Make sure to shake the baking sheet often so they do not burn. You will have potatoes with a creamy interior and a crispy exterior once done.

I hope that you will be sitting outdoors for this meal. There is nothing like taking in a cool summer Jersey evening with your grilled favorites and the sun staying high while dining. Now, what to drink with this dinner? So many options fit the bill nicely. I lean towards full-bodied reds with some herbal characteristics. This dish is great with red blends like Rhone Style Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre blends. Cabernet Franc is also an ideal pairing with this meat, and one we often turn to. Tempranillo is also a tasty choice.

Available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, HotHog taps into local weather data to predict the relative comfort or heat stress levels of pigs on an hourly, daily or weekly basis. Swine producers can then use this information to take pre-emptive measures, like ensuring plenty of drinking water, cooling the pigs with fans or mists, and limiting transport to early morning hours.

Annually, heat stress in pigs costs the U.S. swine industry an estimated $481 million in revenue losses. Ensuring the positive welfare and productivity of pigs (a top source of animal protein worldwide) will be even more critical in the face of global climate change— particularly during the summer months and in tropical regions, noted Jay S. Johnson, an animal scientist who leads the ARS’s Livestock Behavior Research Unit in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Pigs are especially vulnerable to heat stress because they cannot sweat. In modern production settings, pigs cope with heat through panting, while the caregivers adjust ventilation rates, utilize sprinklers, and ensure free access to abundant, cool water for the animals to drink. Without such measures, pigs may start to eat less, grow slower, produce less lean muscle, produce less milk and experience other health, productivity or fertility problems.

Gestating sows are among a swine herd’s most vulnerable members, and when heat-stressed, they may give birth to fewer and smaller piglets. Heat-stressed gestating sows may also give birth to in utero heatstressed piglets that have a greater risk of health and other complications in their postnatal life.

According to its developers, HotHog is the first decision-support tool of its kind to predict thermal stress based on behavioral and physiological data collected from heat-load studies of swine—and more precisely, from non-pregnant breeding females and mid- and lategestation sows. This is what differentiates the app from other decision-support tools that are now available to swine producers.

“Additionally, many thermal indices currently in use were originally developed for use in non-swine species and may not accurately predict thermal comfort and stress in pigs,” added Johnson. The HotHog app was developed, tested and released with collaborators from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC); Purdue University (Purdue) in West Lafayette, Indiana; and the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Future updates to HotHog will include Spanish translation, push notifications and thermal predictions for boars, nursery pigs and growing-finishing pigs, among other groups. The app will apply these updates through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store updates, Johnson said.

By Hubert Ling

You probably have never heard of the life-of-man plant, and you may also not be familiar with its more famous, common name: American spikenard (Aralia racemosa). Aralie is a French–Canadian girl’s name and racemosus means having stalked flowers arranged in a spike.

Actually spikenard has a spreading, complex, compound raceme called a panicle. This article will help familiarize you with a striking NJ native which “carries the cool essence of our rich woodlands.” (hillsidenursery.biz)

Spikenard is in the Araliaceae family along with ginseng and sarsaparilla. Each year spikenard emerges from the ground; large compound leaves expand and a shrub-like mound 3-5 (-10) feet tall forms rapidly. These large, mildly ginger-scented plants, need to be protected from strong

How often do we hear the phrase, ‘The Devil is in the Details’? It is a phrase I often hear when the topic turns to garden design. One design detail that always provides the gardener with surprise and beauty are flowers appearing from bulbs we forgot planting. It was on a trip to Stonecrop, the home and garden of financier and horticulturist Frank Cabot (1925-2011) that I was first introduced to the bulb Prospero autumnalis, commonly known as Autumn Squill. With floweradorned stems reaching 8-12” tall in July into August, Autumn Squill is a small ‘Detail’ that adds big ‘Beauty’ to the garden!

Despite its small stature, Prospero autumnalis native expanse stretches from the United Kingdom South to Portugal and East to Turkey and the Caucasus. With roughly 12 species, it is currently placed within the subfamily Scilloideae, which in turn is placed within the Asparagaceae or the Asparagus family. Being a member of the subfamily Scilloideae is logical as it was originally placed within the genus Scilla in 1753 by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778). The name Scilla, also penned by Linnaeus, comes from