Improvest

[misfitmorgan]

We recently put our 7 month old boar on a 7.5 month old gilt and shall see if he got the job done or not. This is the second attempt the first attempt was 22 days earlier and we are now waiting to see if she comes back into heat or not. If she does we will probly do AI to verify it is the boars age/semen or the gilt.

 

[Jayzandra]

Thanks guys. That was also the info I had read.
What a conundrum.
We have a 400bl boar and 2 probably pregnant sows in a 100X50 foot pen on 2.5 acres of land in the desert, so no grazing. And not enough room to separate to the point that he no longer produces the taint. We are getting ready to divide the pen into quarters for furrowing and raise castrated meat pigs.
The 400bl boar eats too much. if we can't eat him then what are we to do with him?
I was hoping we wouldn't have to castrate. I don't like doing it. I think it's cruel. But we do because of the taint. I'm one that can smell and taste it. I was hoping we could get a new weaned boar and slaughter our big boar for the freezer. Our sows won't be ready to breed again until the spring anyway. (the cold will kill the babies)

 

[Baymule]

On Walter Jeffries site, he talks about feeding hay to cut the boar taint. Since you don't have pasture, you could feed hay for a couple of months, along with his feed, then butcher him.

 

[misfitmorgan]

As ive mentioned several times hay is good for pigs, they really enjoy it and it gives them something to do. Why would separating stop taint? The boar is already sexually active so just moving him away from the sows/gilts is not going to do it i dont think. He would still be eating his own poop. Androstenone is in the boar saliva and is a hormone, you may possibly reduce this odor...a bit but Skatole is from feces and it would not be affected.

If it is not possible to move him to a grazing area of some fashion. You could try the improvest, or adult castration but be warned it is messy messy and the boar will be utterly pissed while your doing it and for a few minutes at least after.

A third option would be keeping the pen very clean of fecal matter that will help Skatole, most people who can taste taint can only taste one or the other.....so does he smell like feces, or urine, or sweat, or what? Make sure you dont mistake the smell of their pen with the smell of them. i have been in several hog barns and the smell is bad but as soon as the hogs are outside of the barn they dont smell much at all. These are of course places with 10-100 pigs and the barn gets cleaned daily. We also have a local friend who has 3 pigs in a small pen and oh the stink.....you can smell them from 20 ft away.

A fourth option would be...sell him. If you have no further use for him and cant pasture him to get rid of taint, cant castrate him, or cant get improvest....i think thats your only option left.

 

[Jayzandra]

From what I've read, it's secreted in the urine, not the feces. I read an article written by a guy doing his own study on his own pigs by slaughtering them at different ages and under different circumstances. So far he's come up with boars not producing any taint up the 250bl mark. (That's how they regularly do it Europe, according to the article, they don't castrate, just slaughter at a smaller size)
Anyway, he has a friend who regularly slaughters his breeding boars at 1000+bls. The way he removes the taint is by putting them out to pasture for a few months in a bachelor herd, away from the scent of any females. Apparently, they don't produce the pharamones used for breeding if there are no females around. If they aren't drooling, then that's a good sign they're producing the pharamones. I'll see if I can find the article.

We live in the desert, and their pen is very large and it does not smell. The pigs themselves don't smell. If you happen to be standing there when urinates, that smells pretty strong.
We do put bales of hay in there for them, but they don't really eat it, they just play in it.

 

[Jayzandra]

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2006/03/28/boar-meat/

 

[Jayzandra]

I wonder if this is something we could do.....
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2012/03/23/have-your-pig-and-eat-it-too/

 

[misfitmorgan]

This is from Sugar Mountain i have read a lot of his material in the past and recently.
They also identified the exact cause of boar taint as being “due to the presence of high levels of androsterone and skatole.”

Androsterone is a hormone from the saliva yes.

Skatole is from feces not urine Skato is latin for feces.

Skatole or 3-methylindole is a mildly toxic white crystalline organic compound belonging to the indole family. It occurs naturally in feces (it is produced from tryptophan in the mammalian digestive tract) and coal tar and has a strong fecal odor.

Androsterone smells like urine or sweat, skatole smells like poop. If you say your pigs dont smell then the liklihood of you even having a boar with boar taint is quite low. What breed is your boar? Or what breeds? If you can taste boar taint you should be able to smell it on the boar when he is still alive and your standing by him.

 

[misfitmorgan]

Also as far as i have found neither is secreted in the urine....the hormone is in the salvia but manufactured in testes and adrenal gland. Skatole accumulates in the back fat and other fat thru out the pig. Sows in heat do not cause boar taint.

 

[Jayzandra]

We just ordered a dozen biopsy punches. We're going to take a sample and fry it up to test for taint. If he's taint free, we're going to go ahead and slaughter him.