It's time for a story incase anyone doesn't grasp the importance of a packing plant being open. On Wednesday I loaded the last market weight pigs out of one of the finishing barns. They went to a #Smithfield packing plant in southeast Nebraska. #realpigfarming #nepork 
By this morning the barn was cleaned out and I moved the pigs that were in the nursery into the barn that I emptied 3 days ago.
Monday I will clean the nursery and Wednesday I will wean the pigs in the farrowing barn, moving those piglets into the nursery.
Those sows that got the pigs weaned off of will leave the farrowing barn, going back to the gestation barn. 5 days later they will go into heat and be bred.
In the meantime I will clean the farrowing barn and by Friday or Saturday it will be refilled with bred sows. The following week, mainly Thursday and Friday, those sows that were bred 114 days ago will be farrowing.
This has been the 28 day cycle that has been repeating itself since before I was even born. If I cannot sell the fat hogs on time, I can't move the nursery on time, I can't get pigs weaned on time, I don't have a barn ready for the next group of pigs that are going to farrow.
This isn't an assembly line where I can just shut the power off and restart when I'm ready. Those sows were bred 114 days ago, long before we thought we'd be in this position, and they will be giving birth whether I have the barn ready or not.
I'm not saying pigs are more important than humans, or that certain plants didn't need to shut down temporarily. The point is we need to assess the situation and decide the least destructive route to take. Which probably means packing plants with "some" cases of #COVID will run.
I can sell pigs for $0 until the money runs out. The only thing worse is not being able to sell them at all. This is not something we are set up to handle, extra barns would cost lots of extra money, and this is the first time we've ever faced this problem in decades.
