Swine

IanM · 2016-01-24 23:18:55

Plot 0034

Here's an animal second- and third-wave colonists can use as a meat source. Although it is not necessarily the most efficient protein source, pork is one of the most popular meats on Earth, and includes such popular meats as salami, ribs, and bacon.

According to the USDA, roughly a total of 110,000 metric tons of pork were consumed worldwide (http://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/circ … oultry.pdf). There are 7 billion people in the world, but several religions, with many adherents, forbid pork consumption. I shall therefore for the sake of defensive pessimism use the countries where pork is the most popular, which in sheer numbers is China. Using the same source, China has a per-capita consumption of .043 kg of pork. Extrapolating the data gives us 4.3 kg of pork necessary for a colony of 100. A single 250-lb (~125 kg) hog provides 144 lb (~72 kg) of retail pork cuts (http://www.oda.state.ok.us/food/fs-hogweight.pdf), which satisfies this need quite nicely, and provides a huge surplus that can be cured and saved for later. More specifically, rounding the yearly need up to 5 kg, and the hog yield down to 70 kg, one hog would provide enough pork for the colony for 14 Earth years. However, regular, non-cured pork can keep in the refrigerator for only around five days and in the freezer for around eight months (http://www.offthegridnews.com/off-grid- … rving-meat), but can last indefinitely when cured and dried (idem). Much of the most popular pork, such as pepperoni and bacon, is cured and dried, so this shouldn't be too much an issue for those, but some more such as porkchops and ribs, in addition to the pork in such regional dishes as Tacos Al Pastor, isn't, and such pork wouldn't last the colony one (Earth) year, let alone 14.

Let's see what this entails in terms of feed. I suggest the colony breeds its own pigs, rather than have to rely on imports, both for the sake of self-sufficiency and of immediacy. Let's assume we start with one breeding sow and preserved hog semen; this is the initial hard times for the colony; obviously they can't kill the sow, and it'll take a while before the piglets mature before the slaughter. Therefore, it'll be all cost and no benefit. But what is this cost? According to http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/AN/AN03600.pdf, there are several diets that pigs can be fed, most if not all of which will be mentioned and accounted for here. This breeding sow would be fed a gestation diet normally, a farrowing diet in the days immediately preceding and following giving birth to a litter, and a lactation diet in the 7-8 days following the farrowing diet.

There are, on average, 9-11 piglets per litter (http://www.thepigsite.com/articles/304/ … tter-size/), and given that lower gravity may adversely affect breeding, I'll choose an arbitrarily lower number such as 6. A sow usually farrows 2 litters per year (http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/livest … -time.html), but the colony needs only a hog for every 8 months, and that combined with likely breeding difficulties at lower gravity would mean that there'd likely be only one litter for every 8 months.

Let us first focus only on the breeding sow. Let's assume that she is imported to the colony fully-grown and ready to breed, her nutrition beforehand being a black box. Gestation diets are fed to her up to 3.5 to 5 pounds (~1.75 to 2.5 kg) per day (this is for Earth days; however, the difference between days on the two planets are around 39 minutes, which I shall treat as negligible). This gestation diet for every American ton (2,000 lb) of feed, or every 400 to 570 days, includes:

-1,642 lb of Ground Corn
-250 lb of Soybean Meal
-40 lb of Choice White Grease
-27 lb of Monocalcium Phosphate
-23 lb of Ground Limestone
-10 lb of Salt
-4 lb of Vitamin mix (proprietary in the source)
-1 lb of 200 ppb Chromium Picolinate
-3 lb of Choline Chloride

A conjunction mission would happen roughly every 910 days, while an opposition mission would happen roughly every 640 days (http://redcolony.com/art.php?id=0208170#null). Therefore, while I would usually support conjunction missions, since this supply convoy would just be on Mars very briefly before returning, I shall use opposition missions here. This leads to up to:
-2,627.2 lb of Ground Corn
-400 lb of Soybean Meal
-64 lb of Choice White Grease
-43.2 lb of Monocalcium Phosphate
-36.8 lb of Ground Limestone
-16 lb of Salt
-6.4 lb of Vitamin mix (proprietary in the source)
-1.6 lb of 200 ppb Chromium Picolinate
-4.8 lb of Choline Chloride

This is important, as essentially everything in the diet other than the corn and soybean meal would have to be imported, at least initially. As for the corn and soybeans themselves, I'll use a pessimistic low of 123.4 bushels per acre for corn (as in 2012, http://cornandsoybeandigest.com/blog/us … roduction), and 39.6 bushels per acre for soybeans (also as in 2012, idem). This results in the need of 2.211 acres (https://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/scales/bushels.html), roughly equivalent to 8,947.6 square meters or 96,311.16 square feet, for corn, and 0.168 acres (idem), roughly equivalent to 679.87 square meters or 7,318.08 square feet, for soybeans, in addition to that already necessary for human sustenance.

This is just for the breeding sow for now, and even then outside of farrowing; I'll elaborate on her pregnancy, lactation, and litters later. As always, any corrections, comments, and concerns are welcome and encouraged.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-02-06 10:49:44

SpaceNut · 2016-02-06 16:51:56

LoL!!! Nice touch but we are along ways away from doing any sort of husbandry on mars, in fact we have lost our way with it even here on earth. If it doesn't come in a can or fully process we are not even eating it.

IanM · 2016-02-08 13:08:26

I'll now revise my original post and include figures for a farrowing sow and her litter.

I said in the post that a hog can feed a colony of 100 for 14 years. I noticed then that that was a large number, but only now I realize that it would more likely support a growing colony population. Assuming, that there's a continuous stream of opposition-class missions happening every 640 days, and that every such period roughly 10 new colonists join the colony, and further assuming that nobody dies or leaves the colony in the interim, one can calculate a more reasonable "shelf life" for cured pork for the colony. Such calculation, however, is irrelevant, as there'll be around 3 hogs for the colony every 8 months (again, as in last time, all times are in Earth times unless otherwise stated), at least 1 of which will be for the slaughter and feast, thus rendering such a budgeting scenario unlikely.

Now we shall discuss the sow and her initial litter. According to the source of diets in the original post, a special farrowing diet is only necessary if the sow is constipated, something that can be also solved with laxatives in the normal diet. As such, no diet change is assumed to be needed for the sow. However, her litter is another matter.

In the original post, I assume there'd be 6 piglets in the litter. Each of these will have an Early-Wean diet for the first 21 days of their lives, they'd be fed roughly 2-3 pounds of it. Therefore, using Table 1 in the source, for every 12-18 pounds of feed, there'd be:
-4.83 to 7.25 lb ground corn, and
-1.8 to 2.7 lb soy meal

Each pig would then transition into a series of 3 successive Starter Diets. 5 to 6 lb of the Starter 1 diet is fed per pig, which, with the same table, leads to:
-12.27 to 14.62 lb ground corn, and
-5.4 to 6.5 lb soy meal
Assuming the same consumption data for Starter Diets 2 and 3 in the absence of the contrary yields:
-16.62 to 19.94 lb ground corn, and
-7.2 to 8.6 lb soy meal
and
- 19.29 to 23.15 lb ground corn, and
- 8.3 to 9.9 lb soy meal,
respectively.

Adding up the high ends of all the litter diets leads to a total of 64.96 pounds of ground corn and 27.7 pounds of soy meal. Using the same yield statistics as the original post, this leads to 0.015 acres for corn (=655.16 sq. ft. or 60.87 m^2) and 0.012 acres for soybeans (=507.83 sq. ft. or 47.18 m^2) for the litter. Combining that with the area needed for the mother gives 96,966.32 sq. ft./9,008.47 m^2 for corn, and 7,825.91 sq. ft./727.05 m^2 for soybeans, or a total of 104,792.23 sq. ft./9,735.52 m^2, roughly the area of 12 US family lots, for the pigs alone.

In the next post I shall calculate the diets for the maturing piglets and the "final equilibrium" of a mature herd of pigs. Any comments, questions, or concerns, or any improvement on my mathematics is greatly appreciated.

SpaceNut wrote:

Nice touch but we are along ways away from doing any sort of husbandry on mars ... If it doesn't come in a can or fully process we are not even eating it.

I'll say that this is indeed true for the first-wave and likely up to even the fifth-wave (I'll admit that my "second- and third-wave colonists" in the original post was a bit figurative), but this is what would be in use for a colony that is gearing towards self-sufficiency, once rudimentary survival is all but guaranteed.

RobertDyck · 2016-02-08 19:29:10

I had posted that meat livestock consume the same vegetable foods we do, just less processed. Some on this board challenged me on this and pointed out animals that can eat "waste" plant material such as stalks. So livestock can be used as a means to recycle plant material that we cannot eat. However, pigs are *THE* animal which most follows this rule.

One pound of meat requires how many pounds of feed. I use the "new" term. When I was a child growing up the English language term for livestock food was "fodder"; for some reason they now call it "feed". How many square metres of greenhouse are required per kilogram of meat? Or how many square feet per pound? It may be more accurate to measure that as greenhouse area per calorie of food, or per gram of protein.

I see your list of "feed" includes some unusual things humans wouldn't consider palatable. "White grease" is equivalent to what you find in a greasy burger. Monocalcium phosphate is mineral calcium found in vitamin supplements. Ground limestone is another calcium supplement, although the human digestive system requires vitamin D in the food at the same time in order to digest it. Chromium picolinate is a chromium mineral supplement, ironically used by humans to treat type 2 diabetes or promote weight loss. I have to assume anything fed to livestock will promote weight gain. According to PubMed: "CHOLINE CHLORIDE is a basic constituent of lecithin that is found in many plants and animal organs. It is important as a precursor of acetylcholine, as a methyl donor in various metabolic processes, and in lipid metabolism." Humans would find more palatable alternatives to these.

You said this is for second-wave or third-wave colonists. I would argue first-wave colonists would be vegan. Not for any philosophical reason, but just because it's practical in terms of greenhouse area. That doesn't conflict with your premise. But I would argue second-wave colonists would want livestock that can consume plant matter that we can't eat. For example we can process wheat to flour for us, while cattle can eat straw. (Don't tell my vegan friends, and it may not be a big secret, but I like beef. ) Some others have argued for goats. So I would argue that hogs (pigs, swine) are for a very well established settlement, far in the future.

SpaceNut · 2016-02-08 20:06:17

After fruit and berry gathering was some early farming but when it comes to animals it is harder to solve for the chicken or egg with what makes a good choice.

Sheep 11,000-15,000 years ago
Cattle 10,000-15,000 years ago
Goats 6,000-7,000 years ago
Pigs 5,000-9,000 years ago
Horses 5,000 years ago
Chickens 3,400 years ago

Of course there are many others that must have been tamed so long ago....

IanM · 2016-02-08 20:44:21

RobertDyck wrote:

How many square metres of greenhouse are required per kilogram of meat? Or how many square feet per pound? It may be more accurate to measure that as greenhouse area per calorie of food, or per gram of protein.

From sow to slaughterhouse, a hog has both the early starter diets and I'm assuming something similar to a gestation diet. This leads to 104,792.23 sq. ft./9,735.52 m^2 of space being needed to make a hog with 144 lb (~72 kg) of meat. This leads to 7,485.16 square feet for every pound of pork, or 135.22 square meters for each kilogram. That is, however, a rough estimate, and not taking into account breeding sows/boars.

RobertDyck wrote:

I see your list of "feed" includes some unusual things humans wouldn't consider palatable. "White grease" is equivalent to what you find in a greasy burger. Monocalcium phosphate is mineral calcium found in vitamin supplements. Ground limestone is another calcium supplement, although the human digestive system requires vitamin D in the food at the same time in order to digest it. Chromium picolinate is a chromium mineral supplement, ironically used by humans to treat type 2 diabetes or promote weight loss. I have to assume anything fed to livestock will promote weight gain. According to PubMed: "CHOLINE CHLORIDE is a basic constituent of lecithin that is found in many plants and animal organs. It is important as a precursor of acetylcholine, as a methyl donor in various metabolic processes, and in lipid metabolism." Humans would find more palatable alternatives to these.

This is just what I found as part of the feed from the pdf on diets. I don't have much experience in the field myself. As you may see, I excluded it from the second post as I was focused more on the greenhouse space required, assuming that all the supplements would be imported. That being said, that is very interesting information.

Ultimately, this is just the first in a series of livestock I plan to work on, and I plan on making threads for other animals.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-02-09 12:01:41

SpaceNut wrote:

LoL!!! Nice touch but we are along ways away from doing any sort of husbandry on mars, in fact we have lost our way with it even here on earth. If it doesn't come in a can or fully process we are not even eating it.

Is it viable to import food from Earth? Will Martian colonists be shipping cans of food from Earth?

RobertDyck · 2016-02-09 13:31:09

Tom Kalbfus wrote:

Is it viable to import food from Earth? Will Martian colonists be shipping cans of food from Earth?

Falcon Heavy can throw 13,200kg to TMI. Using ADEPT/parachute/rocket/legs a 78 tonne entry vehicle can land 40 tonnes of payload. Not sure how much is needed for manoeuvring thrusters to stay on course for Mars. Assume 200kg for that. Use a custom lander instead of Red Dragon. That means unpressurized cargo. Red Dragon is a heavy capsule, only required for pressurized cargo. This gives you 6,666kg of cargo. Standard price for Falcon Heavy is $90 million. So not including cost of the lander, that's $13,500 per kilogram. Is any food worth that?

kbd512 · 2016-02-09 14:30:57

RobertDyck wrote:

Tom Kalbfus wrote:
Is it viable to import food from Earth? Will Martian colonists be shipping cans of food from Earth?
Falcon Heavy can throw 13,200kg to TMI. Using ADEPT/parachute/rocket/legs a 78 tonne entry vehicle can land 40 tonnes of payload. Not sure how much is needed for manoeuvring thrusters to stay on course for Mars. Assume 200kg for that. Use a custom lander instead of Red Dragon. That means unpressurized cargo. Red Dragon is a heavy capsule, only required for pressurized cargo. This gives you 6,666kg of cargo. Standard price for Falcon Heavy is $90 million. So not including cost of the lander, that's $13,500 per kilogram. Is any food worth that?

Top quality bacon is worth any price.

IanM · 2016-02-09 15:38:26

RobertDyck wrote:

Falcon Heavy can throw 13,200kg to TMI. Using ADEPT/parachute/rocket/legs a 78 tonne entry vehicle can land 40 tonnes of payload. Not sure how much is needed for manoeuvring thrusters to stay on course for Mars. Assume 200kg for that. Use a custom lander instead of Red Dragon. That means unpressurized cargo. Red Dragon is a heavy capsule, only required for pressurized cargo. This gives you 6,666kg of cargo. Standard price for Falcon Heavy is $90 million. So not including cost of the lander, that's $13,500 per kilogram. Is any food worth that?

As in the original post, a total of 172.8 lb (~78.5 kg) of materials would have to be imported for feed for the farrowing sow anyway, in addition to feed materials for the sow. That would cost around $1,100,000 total alone, which is why I think we should have domestic husbandry to the extent possible.

RobertDyck · 2016-02-09 15:45:31

IanM wrote:

that is very interesting information.

I should add, monocalcium phosphate is a leavening agent. It's a powder and acidic. Baking powder is that plus baking soda, and a couple other things. When heated the baking soda reacts with the acid to produce CO2 gas, which causes bread to rise or makes pancakes fluffy. An alternative is tartaric acid, extracted from grape juice. But monocalcium phosphate can be made from minerals by simple chemical reactions.

RobertDyck · 2016-02-09 16:14:47

IanM wrote:

I think we should have domestic husbandry to the extent possible.

A permanent settlement will have to produce food locally. I had given talks about this, and vegans loved it when I said Mars would be vegan. But some people hated the idea of not having meat. So I pointed out a later settlement could import livestock, after about 1,000 people were on Mars. Transporting livestock through space would be an issue, you don't want to be in a capsule with a cow freaking out in zero-G. But there has been work on hibernation. Researchers found 80 parts per million H2S gas will cause mice and rats to reduce their body temperature. When they did that plus dropped O2, plus increased CO2, plus dropped ambient temperature, animal body temperature dropped to +2°C. Their oxygen consumption dropped to 10% of an awake animal, and aging dropped to 1/10. They tried with rabbits, which required more H2S, and body temperature only dropped to +5°C, but it did work. Another researcher did it with deer, elk, and moose, which are big animals. He replaced half of their blood volume with saline. That's salt water, with the same salt concentration as blood. The result was 10% of animals died when he tried to wake them, and of those that survived 30% had permanent brain damage. They did nothing but stand around, eat, shit and sleep. Obviously you can't do that with crew, but that's fine for livestock. My suggestion was to transport calves just weaned from milk. Because there won't be milk when the first cattle arrive. And calves to keep body weight minimum for transport. If 10% die on arrival at Mars, settlers get fresh meat. And if survivors do nothing but stand around, that's Ok. My carnivore friends liked that, but my vegan friends really didn't.

After talking about this for a while, Georgia Tech actually tried it. Not with calves, but with piglets. They didn't reduce O2, didn't increase CO2, and most importantly didn't reduce ambient temperature. All they did was expose the piglets to H2S gas. They found body temperature did not drop. I find the experiment irrelevant because there were too many conditions not met.

I also tried to find a solution for chickens. I suggested surgically removing the embryo from fertilized chicken eggs, and freezing in liquid nitrogen. I noticed human embryos are frozen in liquid nitrogen, and remain viable when thawed. This would require putting them back in the egg after thawing on Mars. One member on this forum suggesting freezing the whole egg, so we don't need surgery. That would be easier if it works. We did some research, and commercial farms do refrigerate fertilized chicken eggs, but not as cold as a kitchen fridge, and viability drops the longer they remain refrigerated. Maximum is 6 weeks. A trip to Mars is 6 months. Ok, if freezing in liquid nitrogen works, then we have a solution. The member on this forum said he had a small farm and his neighbour was a vet, he was going to try it. But something happened, he had issues in real life, didn't get a chance to try the experiment. Again the idea is to transport livestock in a way they aren't awake. Alert livestock in a spacecraft for 6 months would be trouble.

Ps. After talking about this a while, someone from PETA asked Elon Musk to keep Mars vegan. He appeared not to know what to say. His response was that he isn't the overlord of Mars. Sorry Elon; I'm the one who stirred up the vegans.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2016-02-09 22:06:46)

IanM · 2016-02-09 20:57:08

RobertDyck wrote:

My carnivore friends liked that, but my vegan friends really didn't.

I do see legitimate ethical issues with knowingly giving livestock permanent brain damage, or at least a significant risk of it. As such, I can see why one would want another solution, but I'm personally fine with it if it's necessary.

RobertDyck wrote:

Again the idea is to transport livestock in a way they aren't awake. Alert livestock in a spacecraft for 6 months would be trouble.

Indeed. That's why my original post suggested that there'd be only one sow, and preserved boar semen.

Terraformer · 2016-02-10 08:20:33

Well, it seems quail can do fine in space...

I don't think importing chickens is going to be a problem. I think chicken and fish will be available from the beginning.

Regarding importing food from Terra... by the time we have an established settlement on Mars, we won't be directly launching things to Mars using Falcon Heavy. I think it's reasonable to assume a price more like $1000/kg than $10,000/kg. So you might be able to make money importing certain alcoholic beverages.

GW Johnson · 2016-02-10 10:37:54

What we should do and what we can do/will do are usually two different things, in most human endeavors.

I suspect the first thing that gets done will be greenhouse vegetable agriculture of some kind. And you can bet that somebody will figure out ways to make beer, wine, and booze (it's never not happened). They'll try to bring animals,too, but long flights are really hard on/with livestock.

A bit later when we know how to fly a lot faster, it'll be easier to reach Mars with livestock. That's when animal husbandry will finally go big-time on Mars.

Since the moon is so much easier to reach, I suspect farm animals will go there first, assuming we actually plant a settlement there.

GW

RobertDyck · 2016-02-10 14:08:54

Off topic. Created a new topic to discuss booze. Post moved there...
Booze

Last edited by RobertDyck (2016-02-10 17:16:05)

GW Johnson · 2016-02-10 16:18:05

Hi RobertDyck! We do think a lot alike, don't we?

You're way ahead of me at bootlegging. All I ever made was "raisin jack" wine from grocery store grape juice and baker's yeast, sitting on top of the water heater. If the grapes are red, it's weak but not bad. If it's the purple concord grapes, it makes lousy "raisin jack".

I did make one batch with wild mustang grapes (native in Texas), plus added sugar. That really was quite tasty. It's been a lot of years since I did that stuff. High school years, and I'm an old retired man now.

You've heard the Jeff Foxworthy thing about "you might be a redneck if"? One of those has it that you're a redneck if "you have to go outside to get a beer". Well, my sisters gave me a keg refrigerator as a birthday present a couple of years ago. So I keep a keg of beer in the garage. Foxworthy would be proud.

That's out here on this small cattle ranch a few miles from anywhere in central Texas, where I have quite literally used a .22 pistol as a re-roofing tool on an old barn. (A .22 is just not good for much else out here. Too damn small, no stopping power. I usually use buckshot in a 12 gauge.)

I've never yet tried it, but there's lots of sweetness to a prickly pear cactus fruit, which my wife makes into jelly/jam every year now. There's no shortage of it down here, either, in spite of my best efforts to eradicate it. I bet I could make a wine or a fruit beer out of that otherwise mostly noxious stuff. It'd be unique.

Distilling works on just about anything. I bet I could combine a little heat with vacuum flash in a 3 or 4 pass still and hit the azeotrope with the cactus juice. Some of it might even be worth drinking; as for the rest, my farm tractor runs on ethanol (I converted the ancient thing myself). Sort of a "drink the best and burn the rest" proposition.

(insert smiley face here, which I don't know how to do)

GW

IanM · 2016-02-10 23:21:49

Let's see what the composition of the feed is, for piglet diets for a single hog, by part, to see what must be imported vs what can be grown:
-10.83 lb of ground corn
Self-explanatory, can be grown
-4.6 lb of soy meal
Self-explanatory, can be grown
-0.5 lb of Porcine Plasma Meal
This is intended as a source of animal protein, and can be served by porcine cannibalism, or for the first litter an equivalent animal protein from an animal previously introduced.
-1.0 lb of Fish Meal
Ditto, can be derived from fish grown by the colonists; indeed, IIRC, one of Zubrin's ideal animals was Tilapia.
-0.1 lb of Spray-Dried Blood Meal
This is intended as a blood source, which can be derived from other animals.
-3.2 lb of Dried Whey
Can be obtained from milk if we have animals beforehand.
-0.9 lb of Choice White Grease
This is intended as the fat source, which can be served by vegetable oil from grown vegetables or that of animals.
-0.2 lb of Monocalcium Phosphate
Intended as the diet acidifier, an effect that could be instead reached by the juice of citrus that can be grown.
-0.1 lb of Ground Limestone
Calcium Carbonate can be harvested from, and indeed limestone on Earth is the fossilized version of, snail shells and seashells, as well as most commonly, eggshells.
-0.05 lb of Salt
Would have to be imported, at least prior to terraformation producing saltwater seas
-0.1 lb of Vitamin mix (proprietary in the source)
As it is proprietary and otherwise unknown, this would have to be as-is imported, but the colonists could experiment with home-grown mixes from natural sources.

For Grower-Finisher Diets, the following would have to be imported, from roughly 300 lb of feed:
-3.6 lb of Salt
-2.4 lb of Vitamin Mix

From this a total of 6.15 lb (~2.79 kg) of material would have to be imported, at a cost of $37,693.35 per RobertDyck's figure, to produce a hog yielding 72 kg of meat, leading to a base price of $523.52/kg ($237.68/lb), much cheaper than importing but still a rather hefty price for a bacon sandwich. Hopefully propulsion technology will improve by then.

Last edited by IanM (2016-02-10 23:22:17)

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-02-17 12:25:41

This leads to an interesting question: How do we transport farm animals from Earth?
How do we take care of these farm animals in transit from Earth to Mars?
How do we launch farm animals into space?
What kind of farm animals can we bring?
How about a cow for instance? or a pig, do we strap those into an accretion couch, easier to do with a monkey than a quadraped.

IanM · 2016-02-17 14:27:05

Those are interesting questions, Tom. Those issues led me to propose bringing only a sow and preserved boar semen. But those have their own set of challenges; what temperature is needed to preserve boar semen, and can semen preserved at that temperature still produce a perfectly healthy litter? And besides, the sow is still a live animal, leading to a going back to your original questions. Robert did mention earlier a possible hibernation technique of replacing some of the blood with saline solution, but that killed some of the animals and left a lot of the others with permanent brain damage, something that could be ethically dubious but if need be doable. As for weight, I'll make a cattle thread soon, and those are really big animals. Again, Robert suggested transporting calves weaned from milk to reduce size, and I think that's a pretty good idea.

Terraformer · 2016-02-17 17:49:51

I'm fairly certain semen can be preserved indefinitely if frozen in liquid nitrogen.

I wonder if there's a way to make sperm that lacks Y chromosomes? If you're growing an animal population from only preserved sperm and a single female, you want to be producing females, at least until your population is the size you want.

Other mammals hibernate, to different degrees. If we could place an animal (or a person, if need be...) into some sort of induced deep coma, that would make them much easier to transport. The downside, of course, if muscle wasting and bone loss, which wouldn't occur in true suspended animation.

IanM · 2016-02-17 18:14:28

Well, that solves the seminal storage issue.

It is indeed possible to sort sperm by chromosome, especially as the X chromosome is much larger than the Y chromosome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_sorting). However, it will not be 100% accurate, but methinks ~99% is good enough. Besides, per the original post, one hog is enough to feed a colony of 100 for 14 years. Also, I think practice is that only hogs are slaughtered, and I think the colony would be a little impatient in getting a return on their investment with meat.

The wasting and bone loss shouldn't be too important for the sow, as she's mainly intended for breeding rather than meat. However, it could be an issue in that she would likely need more feed once she arrives.

SpaceNut · 2016-02-17 22:34:19

One of the things that we will be needing for the husbandry to work for Mars journey of 6 to 8 months is an animal deep space habitat module that will also need to be coupled to a unit for the crew to care for the animals on the way. The smaller that animals are or young the more care they will need for some and for others less. But in either case we need to have seperate areas to control them in and the means to keep the air fresh and the waste in control for there health and ours.....

Oldfart1939 · 2016-12-04 17:29:22

Don't discount the possibility of taking an absolute newborn animal or several animals and doing some bottle feeding for the first 4-6 weeks. In addition to the frozen boar semen, that's probably the lowest weight penalty possible. That's easily accomplished by buying several straws from different boars to have adequate genetic diversity in the growing swine herd. My father in law (RIP) did artificial insemination on his cattle herd--exclusively--with nearly 95% pregnancy as a result. There could be some psychological benefit to having some domestic animals along--just as the emotional support of having pets accomplish in hospitals and nursing homes. I've tubed and bottle fed numerous calves that were born in cold weather. They become pets in a big hurry!

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#1 2016-01-24 23:18:55

Swine

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Re: Swine

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Re: Swine

#4 2016-02-08 13:08:26

Re: Swine

#5 2016-02-08 19:29:10

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#6 2016-02-08 20:06:17

Re: Swine

#7 2016-02-08 20:44:21

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Re: Swine

#9 2016-02-09 13:31:09

Re: Swine

#10 2016-02-09 14:30:57

Re: Swine

#11 2016-02-09 15:38:26

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#12 2016-02-09 15:45:31

Re: Swine

#13 2016-02-09 16:14:47

Re: Swine

#14 2016-02-09 20:57:08

Re: Swine

#15 2016-02-10 08:20:33

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#16 2016-02-10 10:37:54

Re: Swine

#17 2016-02-10 14:08:54

Re: Swine

#18 2016-02-10 16:18:05

Re: Swine

#19 2016-02-10 23:21:49

Re: Swine

#20 2016-02-17 12:25:41

Re: Swine

#21 2016-02-17 14:27:05

Re: Swine

#22 2016-02-17 17:49:51

Re: Swine

#23 2016-02-17 18:14:28

Re: Swine

#24 2016-02-17 22:34:19

Re: Swine

#25 2016-12-04 17:29:22

Re: Swine

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