Operation Castration!

Have you ever wanted to castrate a pig? To be honest, I had not thought much about it before, but we have been thinking that we could save on grocery money if we invested in pigs and raised our own pork. Plus we think it would be fun and a grand adventure! We are hoping to get a couple of piglets and let them mate and later have piglets themselves. We will then raise those piglets for sale and/or slaughter, depending on how many we have. The Agriculture department at the high school where I work have a pig project going on right now, and I have been trying to familiarize myself with the skills and procedures needed in the art of hog raising.

I took the opportunity this morning to watch one of our Ag teachers castrate a pig. Before we went out to the pigs he explained how it is a needful thing to do for three reasons: 1) it stops the sex drive so he won’t mate with any of his litter-mates; 2) it will make him gentler and more docile and therefore he will gain more weight; and 3) if he was left in tact the testosterone spoils the meat to the point that the smell makes it almost inedible.

These particular little pigs are all 20-30 pounds. First he caught one of the pigs and showed one of the senior students how to hold the pig by the hind legs with the pig’s body being held firmly by the students’ legs. The teacher pressed in and felt where the testicles were and made two incisions with a scalpel to get the testicles to come out. He made the incisions high so there would be less bleeding. Then he scraped and broke the vas deferens until the testicles were detached. He said it was important to scrape instead of making a clean cut because the artery could bleed too much. You can actually kill the pig if it is cut the wrong way. When the procedure was finished he rinsed the area with iodine to prevent infection and put him back with the other pigs. The little guy walked around like nothing happened! He did not seem to be in any pain at all! They are going to give the pig a shot of an anti-biotic later, I guess for possible infection. By the way, he is called a barrow now, which is the name for a pig that is castrated.

I don’t completely understand exactly how he knew where to cut at the beginning. The testicles were not evident to the eye and I don’t know what he was feeling. I guess you make the cuts depending on where you feel the testicles? I would like to watch several more times before I had to attempt it myself. They have 8 more males they will be doing in the next few weeks, so hopefully I will be able to get out there with them again to learn more!

This has not been a normal post, I know, but it is (or might be soon) a part of "Our Life".

Oink!