Entire Male Pigs

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
   1. Objectives
   2. Learning goals
   3. Teacher page
2. Entire Male Pigs
3. Castration of male pigs
   1. Statistics
4. Legislation and enforcement
5. Origin of boar taint
   1. Androstenone
   2. Skatole
6. Reasons for castration
   1. Increase the proportion of fat
   2. Increase consumer acceptance
   3. Reduce aggression
   4. Prevent unplanned breeding
7. Surgical castration
   1. Traditional surgical castration
   2. Anaesthesia combined with castration
   3. Gas analgesics
8. Problems related to surgical castration
   1. Animal welfare
   2. Pain and behaviour - the acute response
   3. Reduced growth rate and changed behaviour after surgery
   4. Health consequences
   5. Effect of age
   6. Consumer awareness
   7. Labour cost
9. Alternatives to castration
   1. Slaughter at lower weight
   2. On-line sorting
   3. Management
   4. Breeding and sperm sexing
   5. Perceptual masking of boar taint
   6. Immunocastration
   7. Immunocastration - physiology
   8. Immunocastration - practical implications
10. Completion
    1. Comments
    2. Self-assessment
    3. Key messages
    4. Further reading
    5. Evaluation
11. Acknowledgement

Slaughter at lower weight

Slaughter of entire male pigs at a younger age and lower weight (before puberty) will decrease the risk of boar taint but will not eliminate it (Zamaratskaia and Squires, 2009).

Furthermore, because the time of puberty differs between breeds and individuals there are difficult practical implications.

The relationship between taint compounds and carcass weight across the commercial slaughter weight range in the EU is quite small and correlations between skatole and androstenone concentrations on the one hand and carcass weight on the other hand is low. For example, in the coordinated EU study, overall correlations were about 0.1 for both compounds (Walstra et al., 1999).