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Senior Edwin (Adonis) Meran checks the pigs to ensure their healthy and have enough feed and water.

Imagine this: you wake up at 4 a.m. Slipping on your boots and overalls, you head out the door to the pig farm. Upon arriving, a scruffy truck driver is waiting impatiently for your arrival. But it isn’t all bad, you get to unload pigs this morning, and it is your favorite job, not to mention the easiest.

The trucker leaves, but your job isn’t done. It is time to vaccinate the piglets. This job is the worst part of pig farming. The 15-pound piglets struggle as you pick them up to give them their shots. Every piglet is its own challenge, its own footrace. There are about seven thousand piglets to vaccinate. This will take a few hours.

After skipping lunch to finish vaccinating, you begin sorting pigs that are ready for market into a separate bin. All the ready pigs have been marked with spray paint earlier that day, so it isn’t hard picking out the pigs. The challenge lies is getting the three-hundred-pound pigs to move. But you have your ways, and eventually they are in their pin.

The day ends with another truck coming to take away those pigs you just sorted. At about five, you head home, famished and smelly.

This is an extreme scenario, but it displays the types of jobs one does while pig farming, jobs that are now typical for senior Edwin (Adonis) Meran. What words fail to do, however, is explain the extent of filth that accumulates from a day on the job. Here are a few dirty facts that Meran has learned so far during his eight months on the job.

First of all, dust is bad. “It’s usually pretty dusty,” said Meran, “and by the time you go home, it’s all the way down your nostrils.” The remedy for this is the unpleasant experience of wearing a mask.

Secondly, always, always wear gloves. If you do not wear gloves, you will regret it, especially while vaccinating piglets with runny poo down their legs. After handling seven thousand piglets, gloves are your only protection against the slimy mess.

Finally, keep your mouth shut. This is especially true while in buildings with a trough for the manure run-off, buildings that let the sludge run down and build up. As you sort the market-ready pigs, that same sludge will get airborne in all the ruckus. Just close your mouth.

All this being said, it’s a necessary job that allows Meran to bring home the bacon.