Via RSS feed.April 28th, 2008
How to Castrate a Piglet
Now for our long awaited How To Castrate a Piglet tutorial! Our sensitive readers may wish to skip this post if they feel a bit sensitive when encountering surgical procedures. It does include detailed photographs.
Castrating your own piglets is a necessary chore to do if you are keeping sows for breeding, and raising piglets. Someone will need to castrate the little male piglets (called barrows) unless you are saving them to sell as breeding stock. If they are to be sold as weaner pigs, or to be fed out into butcher hogs, they will need to be castrated. Yes, you can hire a vet to perform this service, but when last I checked the price for castrating two pigs (granted these were large weaner pigs that my in-laws had put off castrating themselves) the vet quoted them $150.00 for the two. My dear husband, Larry castrated them instead with the help of my in-laws (and he did need help, castrating a large pig is very difficult, they are quite strong and need to be carefully restrained).
However, if you castrate your piglets when they are 8 – 14 days old the operation can easily be performed by two people, some can even perform it by themselves if they are particularly talented, and it only requires a matter of minutes to complete. My husband Larry has now castrated a few batches of piglets, and some larger pigs as well, so he will be starring in this tutorial in the photographs along with my father-in-law, Keith. Keith is holding, and Larry is cutting, thanks for letting me take pictures! It was a bit difficult to get good photos of some of the detailed work, as there were 4 adults and my two small children in a smallish area.
Please note that we aren’t vets, and cannot take any liability for the outcome of your own castration of your piglets. This information is provided for educational purposes only.
So, here we go!
- Remove the piglet to be castrated from its mother. Depending upon the breed of pig the mother may display varying signs of distress, and possibly hostility upon having surgical procedures performed to her off-spring, so it is best to be well away from her. We have kept Berkshires, and so do our in-laws, their mothers seem midly concerned, will come take a look, and do some querying snorting from the other side of the fence, but we haven’t had any problems so far.
- Have your helper restrain the piglet in the position show in the photograph. Apply iodine to sterilize the area. Prepare a sharp, sterile cutting instrumet – scalpels with disposable blades can be picked up at the vet supply, local farm store, rural co-ops etc.
- Squeeze the testes sac so that the testicles are snug up against the outer skin of the sac.
- Make a vertical incision with the sterile scalpel on one of the sides of the sac, down low for drainage purposes. When the piglet is held in this position, the slit should be made high on the testes sac so that when the piglet is placed on the ground it down low, and well situated for drainage of the sac. Depending upon the age of the pig you may need to cut down further into the testes sac depending upon the amount of fat between the skin and the testicle. You’ll have to figure this out as you go.
- Cut down into the teste to be removed, and squeeze the testes sac until the testicle ‘pops’ out of the sac. You may need to enlarge your incision slightly to facilitate this removal.
- Once the testicle is outside of the bag, draw it away from the body with one hand. Cut the white spermatic cord with the scalpel, then continue pulling the testicle until the red blood cord snaps off. This will result in the least amount of bleeding for the piglet. Larry has the testicle in his hand in this photo and is preparing to cut the white cord with the scalpel.
- This should be your end result. If you have everything out that is pictured in the below photo, your job is done for that side.
- Now you are done the first side, repeat procedures 3 – 6 on the other side.
- Spray the piglet well with a disinfecting agent, we use iodine, and my in-laws like to apply some colloidal silver as well.
- Place the piglet back in the pen with his mother (he is now referred to as a wether), he will run to her for some tender Momma love and comfort, and will hardly act like anything happed at all. This is a very quick and humane method of castration, hardly seems to fizz the little fellows!
I hope you find this helpful in your own homesteading efforts! This basic technique works well for other animals as well, though with older pigs, and different breeds of animals you may need to cut the blood cord depending upon the age and stage of development of that animal. In that case, pull it out as far as you can before cutting it, so that it will retract back into the body. The method of restraint will vary according to the animal breed and age as well. We have successfully castrated tomcats and bull calves using variations of this method.
well, uuhh, THAT was interesting! we had to uhhh, have the dirty deed done on 5 stallions last week, they are still highly offended.
blessings, Penny Raine
http://www.pennyraine.com/blog
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Fantastic!!! Can’t wait to share this with my husband.
Question – We’ve all heard the saying ‘I bled like a stuck pig’…but I’m presuming, there isn’t a whole lot of bleeding going on with this procedure?
Thanks for sharing!!
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Hi Penny, I know, I read about it in your blog
. I think horses may be more sensitive..emotionally? The piglets are absolutely fine, and the cats just got up and walked away. The bull calves were sort of sad for a couple of days, but they were older.
Camille – Glad you find it helpful! That saying sounds like it comes from when you ‘stick’ a pig when you are butchering it. You slit the pigs throat to bleed it, and yep, they bleed a lot then.
But when you are castrating, the younger they are the less they bleed, because the diameter of the blood vessels is smaller. The big pigs we’ve done have bled much more than the piglets do. So, the quicker they get done, the better
. There is very, very little bleeding at all with a pig under two weeks.
interesting website. thanks for entering my contest! i’ll keep this post in mind if we ever get a chance to homestead…which we hope to do in the next 10 years.
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you cut off a cats balls the same way? it seems that they would make a lot of fuss being older karen
Hi Karen,
A cat needs to be better restrained, because they are older, and they have claws. A burlap bag works well
.
What about a 1-1/2 year old boar… How do you restrain him? I mean, uh, Aint he gonna get mad er sumthin?
Yes – these instructions are only for wee guys. The big boars need to be heavily restrained. Hold his feet – he’s gonna kick and hard, it’ll take a team unless you have some kind of system to restrain him – or get the vet to do it.
i never cut a pig younger than 6 weeks old,,larger pigs cut easy..to cut a large boar..build a shoot.24 inches wide about 7 foot long,gate at both ends,,i mean strong,i use rough sawed 2×8 on 6×6 post..no less than 40 inch wide,,lead boar into shoot..then wrap two strapes about 4inch wide around hog,one towared back,one behind front legs,,then use sharp knife,,i like to have a large boar hungry,eating out of trough,while i cut him,but it should not cause anough pain to bother him much..some hogs are more sensitve than others,,but the secret is to not have the hog scared,and upset,when you start..and keep him calm.
I understand that castrating young piglets would be less stressful because of their age, much like docking tails on 3 day old puppies…But on adult animals??? I would like to know how a grown man would react to having his scrotum sliced and testicles pulled out. Not happily, I imagine. Sorry, but the only thing I can call that is animal cruelty.
just cut 5 boars today,,first if the pig squeeling,and making a lot of noise,,you are doing something wrong,,because it is a near painless,,first catch pig,yes it will squeel,,but its not being hurt,,to stop any pig from sqeeling its so simple,just slip a feed sack over his head..a pig that cant see you will not sqeel..take pig out of pen,,,take your time calm pig down,never cut a pig until its calm,,then use two people,,turn pig over on its back,,slow down calm pig down,use sharp knife if pig squeels out in pain,the knife is not sharp,,slow,cut thrugh skin,direct down middle,,pig should be not doing nothing but grunting,,the pig may squeel a little just for a secound as you pull nut out of slit,,go slow remove nut,,then pull other nut out,remove nut,,spray with idione,turn pig loose and it should go back to trough and start eating..frist,never spray idione before cutting,,clean with warm soap water,,then cut,,if pigs are squeeling like they are in pain,stop get some one who knows how to cut the pigs,because its a nearly a painless procedure..yes i have seen people cut screaming pigs ,,but thats not the way to do it…i have cut a thousand or more,,
Hi Jen,
No, they don’t like it – not anymore than a 6 month old dog or cat who is sexually mature appreciates being castrated (fixed) – a common procedure everywhere. Is that animal cruelty as well? I can’t imagine you’d agree with that statement. We’re talking about castrating domestic animals for agricultural reasons here – not sadistic torture.
In fact, this rarely needs to happen, most pigs are castrated at a young age and only breeding stock is kept intact. However, some larger boards that are being culled from breeding herds may be castrated prior to butchering, but it isn’t a widespread practice.
can i do this with an 18 month old boar that weighs around 500 lbs?
if so how long will it take till all the boar taint is out of the meat so i can butcher him.he is my breeding boar ,but i no longer need him and don’t want to send him to auction as a boar cause i may only get 5 or 10 cents per pound.
thanks for the advice
floyd.
Hi Floyd,
Hmm, I wouldn’t recommend it. The larger the critter the more bleeding and the harder it is to restrain them. If you’re doing a full grown boar, I’d recommend getting a vet involved. We’ve never castrated a big guy, and I don’t know how long you’d need to feed him for to get rid of the flavour. Have you asked an agricultural state agent?
from 3 to 7 days is fine,,it only affects the meat if he has not been cut,before killing him..with a big hog you can not cut,,he can be killed by two expranced men,,the secret is remove the nuts before he can taint the meat,,hears how,,one man will shoot hog,other man will cut off organs before hog can taint meat..you only got a couple seconds to remove organ..but i all ways cut them,because its no big deal..but have helped kill several that was not cut..but killing a uncut hog is a gamble,,neverl put the meat on the stove in the house until you have tried to cook it outside,,because it can stink up a house worse than a skunk can..
We have a nine week old male that we are wanting to castrate. Do you have any recommendations for medication to cover the incision? I would like to find something to keep the flies and dirt from getting in it.
We have only the pen with the females to put him into after the procedure. I am worried about the mud.
Hi, i am thinking of raising pigs one day and this seems helpful. So you can castrate a cat like this? Cool. Well i would NEVER castrate a puppy without anesthetic if i ever castrated a dog i would make SURE he is put under as far as possible. The sound of a dog yelping just breaks my heart.
This was very detailed and informative. I will only correct you in one area. A male uncastrated pig, even a baby is a boar. A castrated male pig is a barrow.
I have castrated pigletts before and have never have a problem thin this time, a week ago i cut 2 small pigs and i just noticed that an infection has set in on one of them, unfortunately i didn’t catch it till today, he pretty swolen so i gave him some penicilin. Have you ever had this happen? What did you you do? Thanks
We haven’t had this problem personally, but my inlaws have. Proper hygiene really helps, use a fresh scalpel on each pig, spray with iodine before and after, make sure you cut low for proper drainage.
Hope your pig is okay!
This is highly wrong!!! Our first duty to them is to protect them, not to hurt them. Who gave u the right to do this? If u want ot save money do it in things that dont hurt others. And even worse u r showing others how to do it???! “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,”.-As “spiritual people” u should be light and act with kindness this is very far from it.
The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel. Proverbs 12:10
Hi Christian,
I can tell that you are from the city and haven’t spent much time around agricultural communities.
How do you think pigs have been castrated throughout time? Or steers? Or geldings? Certainly not by taking each and every animal to a veterinarian.
This is a common agricultural practice, but small homesteaders need to re-learn it.
God HAS given us dominion over the earth – over every beast of the earth etc. This isn’t cruelty, it’s animal husbandry. Beating an animal day after day after day is cruelty, not feeding your animals, not providing shelter for them is cruelty.
I can guarantee you that the shepherds and farmers of the Old Testament were very conversant with the practice of castration. A 2 minute surgical practice isn’t cruelty, it’s a management practice.
I agree with Quiver Momma it isn’t cruelty. Some people are far to righteous. Do they call it cruelty when they get it from the market, i think not.
How can anyone argue that castrating a pig without the use of any painkillers is not cruel? It is INCREDIBLY cruel. There is plenty of evidence showing that these animals do indeed feel excruciating pain, and it did not take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Moreover, it is not logical to argue that because this is a common procedure, it is also a humane one. It is not humane.
Do you eat pork or beef Jackie?
If so I guarantee you that those pigs and cattle were castrated without painkillers. No one uses pain killers for castration. Bulls, pigs, either way, it is all done without pain killers.
I have never claimed that this procedure isn’t painful. Killing an animal also results in pain. Both events occur in order to produce meat to eat.
I have in the past been a vegetarian for 12 years, but I am no longer one. I am willing to be honest about what it takes to produce meat. This is what it looks like in real life folks.
Our family produces our own meat organically and free range from start to finish, including the difficult and painful parts, so we are well aware of the unpleasant parts of the process.
If you don’t like it, don’t read articles about castrating animals. Also, stop eating meat if your conscience cannot handle inflicting pain on an animal. You simply cannot eat meat without pain.
I will be closing the comments on this thread as I feel quite enough has been said on the subject.