When attending Univ of Tennessee circa 1975-1979, a few of my good friends were members of AGR, the Ag Fraternity right behind the Lambda Chi where I resided. Stoney Curry, from Pulaski TN (family were hog farmers), convinced me, a kid from NJ, to take Farm & Animal Management Science as an elective out on the Ag campus. It was a helluva class. We ear notched piglets; castrated calves and pigs; cleaned out dairy cattle stalls and well, it was my only class at UT where I got manure on my shoes. The climax of the class though was walking into the Sow Barn. Here you have approximately 100 or more 2,000lb sows laying in a metal cage/gurney of such (so that they cannot roll over on their youngins and kill them) feeding their dozen or so piglets. The sows are very limited in their ability to move, so basically, they lie down and eat and poop in the same position for several weeks (until piglets are not being weened). To exacerbate the situation, heat lamps hover over the sows so as to keep the piglets warm - which thusly also heated up the sow poop. So, when our class entered the sow barn, I personally almost was knocked backwards from the horrendous smell of emanating from the heat lamps warming up the nice poop. (FYI, I called on pulp & paper plants for years and the smell from the black liquor heating up and breaking down the wood chips is like roses compared to a sow barn)
If I had known the word Sooouiiieeeee back then in 1979, I damn well would have belted it out because it is probably the best word on the planet to describe a smell so vile and caustic. In fact, the last time I smelled this atrocious odor was on a business trip years back when I drove through Fayetteville. Roll down your windows or be prepared to yell soooouiiee this weekend in Fville, cuz there's an odor about ready to explode on the campus when the Vols roll over the hawgs.
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