This is a lesson learned. We should have castrated them at 2 weeks or so, when they were still small enough to be held easily in one adult’s hands. But then 5 weeks came and we were out of town. 6 weeks came and we had CiderFest. Seven weeks came and it was a National Guard weekend. Ryan and Kathleen managed to get one castrated between them.
Some lessons learned from that castration: need better method of holding. Lying them flat on their backs like Auntie Mate did with the berkshires last year didn’t work. This may be because the meishan/IPP cross piglets have deeper bellies and looser skin, but the fact is those testicles dropped deep inside their bellies and we had the devil of a time getting them up to where I could get them out.
We also found that the plan to catch them needed some work (they are still small enough to squeeze through the spaces in a calf panel, if sufficiently motivated.
Trust me, they were sufficiently motivated.)
So Seppi helped build a temporary holding pen, out of scrap lumber with a lockable pallet door.
This worked well to keep them contained, once we got them coaxed into it, but getting them in there was challenging. We routinely had one or two squeezing out between the pallet and the wall as we were trying to close them in.
Adam did the holding for the castrations last Friday. We found it worked better to hold them supine (belly down) so gravity dropped the testicles down into the scrotum instead of up into the belly. We only had to do five because a customer asked us to leave two intact for her.
Next morning they seemed none the worse for wear.
Almost a week later no serious complications yet. We have sold three, so we have one gilt remaining for sale, and up to two barrows as well.
