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My husband Fred and I went out to do castrations yesterday on a litter of pigs. Eight in the litter, six males, four weeks old . Four of these little pigs are spoken for and the new owner has given us a two hundred dollar deposit on the four. We got the first one done, disinfected, worm shot, tail banded, turned loose.
Picked up victim number two and, per routine, I was holding him upside down and Fred was searching for the plumbing. Finally after five minutes with a perplexed expression on his face, he says....
"I can only account for one." I say...
"Oh..... bummer."
This is not a unique situation. Not unheard of for a little boar to be holding an ace in the hole so to speak. We didn't get nervous until we turned him loose and got another just like him. We didn't become alarmed until the third one proved to be holding out as well. Naturally it's the three other pigs that have been half paid for already.
Now before anybody says...well, put yourself in THEIR place....ha ha, this is not voluntary. If that was the case, only one male from every litter would be castrated, right?
Questions as follows:
Is it common to get more than one cryptorchid pig per litter?
Is it genetic?
Will the other one eventually drop?
If so, at what point do we give up waiting?
Picked up victim number two and, per routine, I was holding him upside down and Fred was searching for the plumbing. Finally after five minutes with a perplexed expression on his face, he says....
"I can only account for one." I say...
"Oh..... bummer."
This is not a unique situation. Not unheard of for a little boar to be holding an ace in the hole so to speak. We didn't get nervous until we turned him loose and got another just like him. We didn't become alarmed until the third one proved to be holding out as well. Naturally it's the three other pigs that have been half paid for already.
Now before anybody says...well, put yourself in THEIR place....ha ha, this is not voluntary. If that was the case, only one male from every litter would be castrated, right?
Questions as follows:
Is it common to get more than one cryptorchid pig per litter?
Is it genetic?
Will the other one eventually drop?
If so, at what point do we give up waiting?