Piglet Castration

Piglet Castration

This is from my ansci 1. Castration is commonly performed on domestic animals not intended for breeding. Domestic animals are usually castrated in order to avoid unwanted or uncontrolled reproduction; to reduce or prevent other ways of sexual behavior such as territorial behavior or aggression (like fighting between groups of uncastrated males of a species).

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. Piglets are commonly castrated 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. Castration is also practiced to avoid the boar taint or to removed unpleasant odor from pork.

Procedure

1. Remove the piglet to be castrated from its mother. Have your helper restrain the piglet. Apply iodine to sterilize the area. Prepare a sharp, sterile cutting instrument – scalpels with disposable blades.
2. Squeeze the testes sac so that the testicles are snug up against the outer skin of the sac.
3. 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.
4. Cut down into the testes 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.
5. 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.
6. Now you are done the first side, repeat procedures 3 – 5 on the other side.
7. Spray the piglet well with a disinfecting agent like iodine.
8. Place the piglet back in the pen with his mother; he is now referred to as a wether.

That is how to castrate a piglet…