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Notch of the Land Shark (AKA: Pig)By Michael Fisher CSU Golden Plains Area Livestock Extension Agent I have long been a fan of the work of Larry McMurtry. His Lonesome Dove series is a literary masterpiece that speaks for the soul of forgotten visionaries. Additionally, when his writings have been converted into a set of filmed mini-series, the directors and producers have obviously taken care to hold true to McMurtry's view that the setting and background is as much a piece of the work as are the characters. This weekend I discovered that Comanche Moon, the latest in the Lonesome Dove series, is out on DVD. So I purchased a copy and then used it as a diversion during yesterday's blizzard. There is a scene in the movie in which Captain Gus McCrae tries to convince his Texas Rangers that a pig in the Rio Grande River is a dangerous land shark that might attack at any moment. There is also another scene that has pigs in it. While the swine scenes add some unexpected amusement to the western, they also remind you that this is just a movie that was made about times long ago. While the starring pigs' quality and breeding are not what I would have expected to find in Texas during the mid-1800s, the most obvious clue is the pigs' ear notches. The swine sport the Universal Swine Ear Notching System, a modern day identifier. It can prove challenging to keep an ear tag attached to a pig. Therefore, an ear notching system was devised to maintain permanent identification of pigs within an individual swine operation. The system works by assuming that the pig's right ear is always used to mark the litter from which the pig came and the left ear will identify the individual pig within that litter. Then notches, which represent identification values, are added together in a fashion similar to that of the Roman numeral system to determine the pig's identification. An imaginary line is used to divide each ear into an inner and outer half, in relation to the pig's head. Obviously, each half has a lower and an upper side. These are assigned a value of 1, 3, 9, or 27 and up to two notches can be removed from a section. The inner-lower section is valued at 1 and the outer-lower section has a value of 3. On the upper side of the ear, the outer section counts as nine and this is the last section that we worry about in the left ear. However, in the right ear, the litter ear, the inner-upper section represents 27. Additionally, if the tip of the right ear is notched out, that would represent 81. Let's assume that you had 32 sows that you farrowed. The last sow to have pigs produced a litter of 15 piglets. So in using the Universal Swine Ear Notching System you would give the last pig that you notch a total of 7 ear notches. In the right ear, the piglet would get one notch in the inner-upper section (27), one notch in the outer-lower section (3), and two notches in the inner-lower section (1). 27 + 3 + 1 + 1 = 32. The left ear would receive one notch in the outer-upper section (9), and two notches in the outer-lower section (3). 9 + 3 + 3 = 15. Hence, you have just notched pig 32-15, the fifteenth piglet from the thirty-second litter. Note that the notch numbers are selected in multiples of three. This allows for the use of only two notches per assigned value and a reduction in the overall number of needed notches. In other words, rather than making three notches in the 9 position, you can make one notch at the 27 position. So if you should watch the mini-series Comanche Moon in the future, see if you can figure out what the litter and individual number of the land shark are. If you wish to discuss this subject further, Michael Fisher can be reached through the Yuma County Extension office at 970-332-4151 or by e-mail at mj.fisher@colostate.edu. 4/14/08 Date: 4/10/08
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