Castration

I had the vet come out this morning to teach me how to castrate our little piglets.  It was not something I was looking forward to doing, but a necessary evil.  In the US, most butchers will not process an intact boar for meat.  There is something called "boar taint" that permeates the meat and can contaminate other meats nearby, thus making them taste bad.  A lot of other countries still butcher intact boars, but they do so before 5 months of age, to avoid the testosterone.  Here, even if the boar is young, you'd be hard-pressed to find a butcher that would take the chance.  Therefore, we castrate.

Dr. Crawford is awesome.  He is a young vet with skill in so many areas.  We have had him here to burn horns, to cut tusks, to treat illnesses, and now, to castrate.  We were joking about how his job is NEVER boring.  And today was no exception.

We started with him in the pen.  He grabbed the first boy and handed him over the fence to me.  Ruby was not happy, but her focus was on me and the piglet instead of Dr. Crawford.  And I was, thankfully, out of reach on the other side of the fence.  We took the piglet around to the front of the house so that he wasn't right next to the pig pen where momma was upset.

We used a pool ladder to drape the baby over.  I held his hind legs open and the rest of his body hung down off the back of the step.  He was more upset when I was holding him upright than when I turned him upside down on the ladder.  The doc cleaned off his booty with alcohol and betadine.  He palpated the testes and with one thumb, he held one teste up where we could see the bulge.  Then with a very sharp knife (actually he used a disposable scalpel) he made a vertical incision over the top of the teste.  It almost immediately popped out.  He pinched the cord that attaches the teste to the body and pulled the teste out.  The cord snapped.  He repeated this on the other side.  This time, the cord did not snap.  He told me never to cut the cord straight, rather to slice downward like a razor until it broke.

There was very little blood and amazingly, the piglet didn't cry a single time.  It didn't even flinch when he cut.  I don't know if this supports the theory that piglets have a very limited nervous system when young, or if the blood had rushed to the piglets brain and he was in a semi-trance when we did the procedure.  Whatever it was, he seemed fine.

We coated the whole site with Blu-Kote (although the doc said that Vetricin would be better) and put him back in with momma.  She was upset.

But we had two more babies to do.  So, the courageous doctor went in with the pigs.  He scouted for the next boy, grabbed him and made a run for the gate.  I opened the gate, he slid through with Ruby on his heels.  His first comment, "She's fast!"  Yes, she is.  And that is why HE went in to get the piglet.

We castrated the second baby without trouble and returned him to the pen.  By this time, Ruby had circled the wagons and was protecting the babies in the shed.  We still had one baby to do.  So...the doc went back in the pen.  He scouted the last boy, grabbed him and ran.  I opened the gate, but he missed the hole and ended up trapped in the corner with Ruby on top of him.  I swung the gate the other direction and he slid out.  He checked his legs several times, but Ruby hadn't bitten him once.  It was at this moment that we talked about how NOT boring the job of a mobile vet could be...and of how many people could go home at night and talk about how they were chased by an angry sow.

We took care of piglet number three and returned him to momma.  I gave the doc a broiler chicken for his courage.  I'm not sure that I would try this on my own, but I certainly understand the process now.  And I think I would steal all of the babies at once, not one at a time.