Now for those of you who think the title of this post refers to the mere owning of pigs you are very much mistaken. See we purchased two weanling male pigs that were approximately ten to twenty pounds each. No problems so far except that the person we purchased them from had yet to castrate them. My wife brought the pigs home a few days before we went on vacation. A week down in Disney followed by a week of my wife and kids at her mother's place in Alabama. Did I mention that we all caught a nasty cold down at Disney which I am just finally starting to get over. What all this means is that by the time we are ready and able to castrate the pigs they weigh in at about 60 lbs for the big guy and maybe 40 lbs for the runt. I will spare you the details of the castration, except to say it is surgery that I am performing on the pigs while my wife is trying to hold them still. Normally watching my petite wife try to wrestle a pig would be funny, but when I am trying not to cut her or myself with the scalpel, nor cause any undue harm to the pigs during the procedure it is quite stressful.
I am happy to say that the pigs seem to be healing nicely, and my wife and I now know that we can do some things we never would have thought about.
3 comments:
You are braver folks than I. I'm already trying to justify the expense of a vet and anesthesia when it comes time to castrating our lambs.
Great photos!
Jenny
It was not an easy thing to do by any stretch.
I can honestly say that in retrospect, I think the most traumatic part of it for the pigs was being held down. That's what upset them from the beginning, and they were really up and about and fine once they were free again.
There was one cut that obviously caused pain, but it wasn't the incision, which seemed to cause no reaction, and it was the last cut and over quickly. I don't think it would have been nearly as traumatic if it had been done when they were younger.
Honestly, I'm not convinced that putting an animal under is necessarily less traumatic unless the animal is comfortable being held in arms and touched to begin with like a dog or a cat. Some bottle-fed babies might be. Factor in the recovery time and the risk of anesthesia, cost aside, and it becomes a much more complex issue, imo.
More power to you! I don't know why I'm so squeamish about this particular thing--sheesh I've stood in the body cavity of a dead elephant for goodness sake. I'm just hoping we can slaughter any ram lambs before their intactness (is that a word?) becomes a problem. We do need one wether for our ram but we'd likely try to bottle raise him (hopefully a twin so mama can keep one) so he would be comfortable being held for sedation.
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