Gestation Crates

*edit* The pictures screwed up for some reason, so just click on them to see them in their entirety.

If you watched those clips with Colleen I just posted, she mentions gestation crates. For those of you who do not know, these are gestation crates:



Basically a crate where female pigs (sows) stay while they are pregnant. The pigs can not move around, they chew on the metal because they go so insane from confinement, they cry, they are uncomfortable, they never get to see sunlight, rain, whatever, they don't get to run around with their pig friends.

When the pigs give birth, they are moved to a farrowing crate:



This is where the sows feed their baby piglets. They are forced to lie on their sides for about three weeks, whereupon the piglets are torn away from their mom. The piglets then get most of their teeth cut off (so they don't eat the other pigs due to extreme malnutrition) and their tails cut off (so the other pigs don't chew them, for the same reasons mentioned prior). The boars live to be about 5 months where they are then slaughtered. The sows then became baby making machines.

I found this website while I was looking for the pictures of the crates. It's really interesting, I recommend all non-veggies to browse through each page. It is a UK website, so it gives a slightly different perspective from the American websites.