A Little Lesson in Pig Castration

Not for every reader obviously

When I first met my husband he had this really beat up old Tahoe. The paint had faded on it and it was all busted-in in various places and the AC and heat didn’t work, but it was a hand-me-down and he hadn’t paid for it, so he felt pretty fortunate. When we were engaged, we were given two piglets in his hometown and we drove two hours, back to my house, with them in the back of that Tahoe. We raised them out and had them for BBQ at our wedding.

Once we got married, we had school debt to pay off, but after that we saved and started shopping for a truck. We hauled enough wood and feed and animals to feel like, despite not having much room for children, we would need a truck. So finally one day we drove to Columbia to a used Toyota dealer and bought a Tundra, 1974 edition, with the beautiful brown leather seats. We were pretty pleased with ourselves. We figured it was the nicest vehicle we would ever own, and we promised each other we’d keep it that way as long as possible.

But pigs. We traded our neighbor for a sow, and a few days afterward she had twelve healthy babies. When we told our neighbor this you could see the relief on her face; she had made the deal in the nick of time. Piglets are the cutest. Truly, after goat kids, I think they are the sweetest baby farm animal. But the mama pig, who loaded up for us easy enough a few days prior, became a hellish monster. We could hardly go in the pen at all, much less get anywhere near the babies. She was incredibly protective, very large and very strong. She could eat me, and she wanted to. I could see it in her eyes.

Like all millennial homesteaders, we spend the night before any necessary task watching youtube videos. In them, castration wasn’t exactly a breeze, it looked horrible actually, but also pretty straightforward: pick em up and cut em out. I had emasculated many male goats growing up, and together my husband and I had banded many calves. So we felt like we could handle this, although the procedure for pigs is more invasive, as their testicles are on the inside (in case you didn’t know) and must be cut out. It’s best to do this just a few days to a couple weeks old, mostly because it becomes almost impossible to hold onto a squirming pig who is much older.

Well the weeks flew by, as they do when you have young children especially. I was big pregnant. The piglets were probably 4 weeks old already, when we finally had a free morning with childcare help. We tried to confine the mama pig into a dog cage, but she broke right through it, busting it in pieces, chasing us out of the pig yard. (An angry pig with its snorting, grunting and screaming, sounds just like an orc from Middle Earth.) We built a whole separate section of pen down in the woods, got her in that area, shut several gates between, and tried to quietly carry the piglets out the other side, but as soon as one squealed she came running, breaking through all barriers. I stupidly had locked the door from the outside, and hardly made it out in time. I was almost pig meat. Having the strong emotions of a woman great-with-child, I cried and stomped my feet and said some strong words to my husband about how I needed a beach vacation and a haircut and an easy life a long distance away from livestock and how I wasn’t helping anymore! Five minutes later, we carried in a coyote trap and successfully captured her inside, but she was remarkably able to lift the heavy iron door with her nose.

A couple more weeks went by with us trying various techniques to no avail. Finally, one morning, the Lord was on our side. She had gotten in the coyote trap again and was eating corn. We stuck boards in the door (precut for this purpose) to keep it from opening (for the time-being), and gently and as quickly as possible loaded the piglets in a cage and carried it out the pen door and lifted it into the back of our new truck, which we had waiting. Just as the mama was breaking out, we ran and jumped into the cab and took off, far enough, hopefully, that she wouldn’t find us if she escaped the fence. But we knew it was a bad idea to be on ground level with her, so we decided to castrate right there in the bed of our new beautiful white truck. Reader, we were seriously afraid of that pig. (We still are, she is still with us.)

Well these piglets were big by now and incredibly strong. Of the twelve, in the Lord’s good humor, ten were boys. You have to hold them upside down, push their testicles down (they are understandably tucking them in) and make the cuts, one on each side (deep cuts, deeper than feels at all comfortable) and pop them out, and then cut or pull them out. There is blood and squealing—men yell, women cry. I said a few four letter words that had apparently been laying dormant in me for decades, waiting for an appropriate occasion. I was holding the first time, but we realized that I was taking the brunt of the physical side of things and this was no good. So we switched places, but cutting is the more emotionally stressful end of the deal. There is a great mental hurdle that has to be overcome in such a scenario. The kindest thing you can do for the animal is to get it over with. You have to cut out the empathy and focus. It takes practice, but thankfully we had plenty of opportunities, twenty to be exact. About half way through, the testicle bucket got kicked and they went flying through the air and after that I just started throwing them.

My dad came along and started filming us. He loves to send videos out to all his friends, and I just thanked heaven for the hundredth time that the man has never figured out or even understood the concept of social media, because this whole bloody scene was embarrassing, unprofessional, shocking and probably illegal. But he said his friends got a kick out of it, so that’s all that matters.

(To comfort the reader, because I’m thinking you may need a little bit of that right now, the piglets really do recover very quickly, miraculously.)

When the deed was done, we wiped our sweaty brows, exchanged forgiving words, and looked around us, feeling weary and powerful, like the last ones standing in an apocalypse… and a little testicle slid down the back window.

Every time we crank-up the beautiful truck now, there is a smell that comes up briefly from deep inside of pig. We only hope others don’t recognize that particular smell as quickly as we do. When we are all dressed up and feeling fine, it is a funny little reminder to us of who we really are. Our eyes meet for just a moment, knowingly.

I was raised homesteading, and my husband was raised a country boy in the watermelon (and stray dog) capital of the world, and yet our learning curve is often steep and our stress and fiasco level, extreme. So dear reader, if you’ve ever felt incredibly unpraiseworthy in the pursuit of basic skills, I would challenge you to a battle of disasters, and would bet a side of bacon on our coming out on top.