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Texas Agriculture suffers millions of dollars in damages from the invasion of feral hogs. So, Texas wants to know, what’s causing this feral hog invasion, and how do we deal with it?Texas has the biggest feral hog population in the United States. It started as another grazing mouth on our landscape, but now it’s overpopulated and causing a problem for agricultural life. “Pigs compete with native wildlife for forage,” Mike Bodenchuk, former state director of the Texas Wildlife Services Program, said. “They alter habitats, they foul the water sources. They predate on a lot of wildlife as well. Reptiles, ground-nesting...

Pack of feral pigs caught on camera damaging lawns in Bexar County neighborhood VIDEO AT LINK............. A pack of 10 wild hogs rooted up several lawns in a Bexar County neighborhood over the holiday weekend. The pigs were caught on camera damaging multiple yards as they used their snouts to forage for underground food. The neighborhood, located about three miles south of SeaWorld, was hit a few weeks earlier, resulting in major damage to multiple yards. One of the homes that was initially hit had its yard completely uprooted. The more recent incursion left damage to at least four properties....

Around the world, scientists are now beginning to examine samples of the virus with a significant question in mind: Could this strain of the disease cause a global pandemic? This international network of scientists keeps constant watch for good reason. In 1918 and 1919, a flu pandemic killed between 20 million and 40 million people, more than the total death toll of World War I, more in a year than the Black Death of 1347 to 1351. More recently, an H1N1 swine flu pandemic was blamed for more than 284,500 human deaths worldwide between April 2009 and August 2010. So...

Raymont Willis, 42, disappeared from his home on Johnson Hill Road on July 4, 2020. His disappearance is connected to Koby Roush — who disappeared the following day and was also said to have been fed to pigs — through a man who overdosed two weeks later, Luke Farmer. NBC4 obtained a report by the Ross County Sheriff’s Office that showed that Farmer was wanted for questioning on July 20, 2020, in the disappearance and possible murder of two people in Pike County. One person named in that document was Roush, the other was referred to as “Willis.” Neither Willis’...

'He was a prophet and we rejected him.' The man who was mocked on Twitter in 2019 for raising concerns about feral hogs is now being defended as a modern-day prophet due to a “feral swine bomb” that is ravaging the San Francisco Bay Area. The New York Times detailed in an article on Tuesday how feral pigs have been threatening drinking water and damaging property outside the Golden Gate City, leading many local residents to seek out their destruction. “They are tearing up lawns, ripping through golf course fairways, threatening the drinking water and disturbing the harvests at Napa...

CEDAR HILL, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) – Feral hogs seem to have the run of North Texas and in search of nutrient rich grubs, it’s no surprise that they’ve behaving like pigs. “They chew up the grass, they tear up the landscaping and again, they present a hazard with automobiles,” says Jack McFadden of Cedar Hill. “We’ve had at least the first reported accident of hitting three wild hogs here on Lake Ridge Parkway.”

The first outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF) in the Western Hemisphere in four decades began on July 28 in the Dominican Republic and was confirmed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The presence of ASF has led to massive hog culling on the Caribbean island that borders Haiti. Bloomberg notes the island may have to slaughter more than half a million pigs to prevent the deadly swine fever virus from spreading. Pork supplies are dwindling, and Dominican importers are panic buying from U.S. slaughterhouses. The latest USDA data shows U.S. exporters shipped a whopping 3,500 metric tons...

An influential hog dealer sanctioned twice for defrauding pork producers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars says it has fired employees responsible for its latest violations and paid restitution to affected sellers.USDA said its investigation found the practices went on for three years, from January 2018 through 2020. The agency ordered Lynch Livestock to pay $445,626 in penalties and restitution, and to stop recording false weights, altering classifications of hogs delivered, and creating false scale tickets.In the press release, his company said the USDA received a complaint in January that employees at its Waucoma buying station were manipulating the...

A Sioux Falls meatpacking plant was forced to close when it became the epicenter of COVID-19 in South Dakota. Three weeks after executives from its Chinese owner, WH Group, visited the plant, a month after President Trump’s ban on travel from China, nearly 600 of Smithfield Foods’ 3700 employees tested positive for the virus, as have 135 additional people in close contact with employees. Smithfield Foods was started in 1936 by a family in Virginia. Today, the Chinese own Armour and the famous Smithfield hams, together with the most quintessential American brand of all -- Nathan’s Famous hot dogs, with...

Karma Forget the billions spent on China’s massive military build-up, the ongoing attempt to make the Chinese Communist Party the most powerful and feared force on the planet. The yellow peril is being decimated by tiny foes, one of them microscopic. All the chest-thumping and saber-rattling, and it finally comes down to a stand-off with a lowly bug that happens to hate communists. Boy, they didn’t see that coming! African Swine Fever (ASF) With a mortality rate near 100%, ASF has swept through China’s hog industry, decimating their primary source of protein. Best estimates put losses at 30-35% of China’s...

One of my absolute favorites. Henry's sister Cornelia, Mistress Van Kleeck, four years his younger, most likely told Henry this story, which he then turned into a humorous poem about her tenant's excuse for not paying her the pig he owed her. Illustrated with vintage postcards. Going the opposite way, a very short religious poem that's also a favorite of mine, "Without distinction..."

Baboons can stand in for humans during cross-species transplantation studies. Now, for the first time, researchers have kept baboons alive and healthy for up to six months on transplanted pig hearts. Credit: Paul A. Sounders ========================================================================= In four adjacent enclosures transplantation researcher Bruno Reichart kept four happy baboons. “They can hop around, eat, drink and they are enjoying life,” he says. “They watch TV—their favorite is the cartoon with the chipmunk.” Most importantly, he says, they were healthy and normal—which is astonishing, given the fact that the hearts beating life in their chests were anything but normal for a baboon....

AN AMBITIOUS pig farmer raising muscle-bound mutant porkers for the bacon market is selling their sperm on Facebook. The Cambodian-based breeder is flogging the semen - along with insemination kits - to others looking to move into the 'Frankenswine' market. Mutant ...one of the giant pigs greedily gobbles up his massive dinner at a farm in Cambodia ______________________________________________________________ Scientists in South Korea have been credited with originally genetically-engineering double-muscle hogs to avert a future pork shortage crisis. They carefully altered pig genes to create super-sized swines capable of producing more meat than usual breeds. Farmyard footage shows similar porky 'monsters'...

A while back there was a story of an Alabama man that shot this huge humongous hog from his porch. This hog is huge, check out the photo. At the time there was much bickering on whether or not the hog was wild. Not claiming that the man poached it or was claiming it wasn't, it’s just that the public was curious. As the story goes an Alabama man, Wade Seago shot it from his front porch with a revolver when he saw the hog near his porch and dog. Most people could careless about Wade's rights to shoot the...

The discovery was made when the piglet was spotted next to its mother after she gave birth to eight young in the rural area of Santo Domingo in Santiago del Estero Province in northern Argentina. However, the human-like piglet died a few hours later due to breathing difficulties. Pig and goat breeders Walter Oscar Velez and wife Roxana Noemi Villarreal, who also produce charcoal at their farm, said that they are at a loss for an explanation. It is the latest in a number of horrific mutations in the country which is at the centre of a row over the...

They've been an issue in North Texas for years. Farmers and ranchers have had their hands full with herds of feral hogs. Increasingly, they're being spotted in many less-open areas. On any golf course, there are certain things considered to be a hazard. “Sand traps. Water. Apartments,” soughed Clint Hollandsworth. The golfer from Denton has hit them all, at Timberlinks Golf Club. But lately, he and others have noticed something else. “Right up the left side of number two, it was torn up really bad,” said Hollandsworth. While the challenging course rolls through hills and woods through The Timberlinks at...

A huge hog weighing in at a reported 416-pounds was shot in East Texas. “Mr. Joe Clowers shared pics of his food plot nightmare that ended late Saturday night,” Gregg County Game Warden posted to Facebook. Texas Parks and Wildlife estimates that there are more than 1.5 million feral hogs in Texas. There seem to be very few inhibiting factors to curtail this population growth, according to TPWD.gov. Clowers told Chron.com the hog preyed on the fawns in the area and Clowers added that he always stayed armed when visiting his deer feeders in case the hog in question charged...

Wild pigs are perhaps the most destructive invasive species in the United States, causing an estimated $1.5 billion in damages every year to crops and property across the country, uprooting farmers' fields, degrading water quality and out-competing native wildlife for food. In the latest installment of AL.com's series on invasive species, we examine the feral hog, one of the costliest non-native species in Alabama, and what landowners and wildlife officials can do to keep their populations under control.

FULL TITLE: EXCLUSIVE: Evil father of 7-year-old Adrian Jones who starved him, bound him to cutting boards and fed his dead body to pigs is sentenced to life in prison His face devoid of any emotion, the evil father of 7-year-old Adrian Jones was sentenced to life with a minimum of 25 years in prison in a Kansas City courtroom today. Dressed in a navy blue and white striped prison jumpsuit and orange Crocs, Michael Jones, a 46-year-old former bail bondsman, refused to look around as Adrian’s grandmother, sister and mother addressed the court. He pleaded guilty in March to...

Texas has a new plan for its 2.5 million feral hogs: total annihilation. Sid Miller, the state's agriculture commissioner, just approved a pesticide — called "Kaput Feral Hog Lure" — for statewide use. "The 'hog apocalypse' may finally be on the horizon," Miller said in a statement on Tuesday. SEE ALSO: First human-pig chimeras created, sparking hopes for transplantable organs — and debate "This solution is long overdue," he added. "Wild hogs have caused extensive damage to Texas lands and loss of income for many, many years." Texas's agriculture commission estimates that feral hogs cause $52 million in damage each...