The taint, if it is going to happen, is already present in the fat of the animal. Very useful information, and your years of experience lend credibility with these old timers makin’ fun of me. For small orders we recommend purchasing through the many fine stores that carry our products. Most importantly, breeders need to select for temperament. Wiki might help. Thanks and thanks for all of the information you share!! Keep on keeping! Although the chemical compounds responsible for boar taint are under study, it is generally considered that 16-androstenes, a group of steroids in which 5-androstenone is a main component, are primarily responsible for boar taint. Refrigeration and electric companies love it. Most pigs don’t have it at slaughter age. If you do use my works without my permission then I may sue you for usage, damages and attorney's fees and you will have nightmares of being chased down a steep mountain by wolves and 1,000 lb boars gnashing their huge razor sharp tusks in anticipation of catching you. It should thus be possible to select for pigs which do not have boar taint. They were 6 months old when we slaughtered them. There is still a lot of myth around taint and people fear it. Perhaps the most direct way to do it is to do a biopsy on the boar so you eat some non-vital part of him including some fat. When they heard we were not going to castrate our pigs their attitude towards us became fairly unfriendly. My project thread Agriculture collects solar energy two-dimensionally; but silviculture collects it three dimensionally. It is just too dangerous to breed ill tempered 200 to 800 lb animals. I’d turn him into lots of sausage. Same for butter and a lot of other things I have found other people in more urban areas refrigerate a lot more than people in rural areas. Location: Vermont, off grid for 24 years! 6. Your email address will not be published. Well, we did it. Sale on Processing Supplies and Equipment! Maybe a pb thing? Browse new & used tractors for sale Select against it – by eating that boar you’ve helped weed out the tainty boars. extended their performance recording scheme and their breeding goals by boar taint traits. The amount of androstenone and skatole is genetically determined. Another way is to test some of the brothers in a group and then cull the whole group if they are tainted but keep the best if they aren’t tainted. The other is caused by skatole which is produced by bacteria in the intestines and primarily is a problem with intensively raised penned pigs who are in their own manure all the time. I’ve finally experienced what might be boar taint. Additionally, there is much you can do with your pig management practices to reduce the likelihood of taint. If so, eat it. Keep in mind that until you’ve tested intact (uncastrated) boars at slaughter age you won’t know if the castration is necessary or not. if you have killed that boar, he can’t breed anymore. The hardest part is getting the sperm and timing it with the sow’s cycle which is just a matter of record keeping. The risk of boar taint cannot be completely eliminated by slaughtering entire male pigs before … I’ll be testing out these big/little mixes in Spring 2021 to see how that turns out. What is the difference between a gilt, a sow, a barrow, and a boar? Why risk it? If you find a typo or something that needs editing please. There is no privacy on the Internet. I can skin out an animal myself and pop it with my 9 mm, and I have stitched up wounded sheep and did minor surgery on a dog. Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. They also do not refrigerate their eggs, either in the store or in the home. I can also put my extra boars in my own freezer and not cave to pressure to cause unnecessary suffering. There are very significant advantages to not castrating, besides the avoidance of the unpleasantness, infection and death. :}. Two injections are not required to have a problem. It is DE-LICIOUS! this might be a stupid question.. :). The question was, “Is castration necessary?” After much literature research on the topic as well as eating progressively older and older boars I’ve come to the conclusion that routine castration is not necessary at least for our pigs and possibly not for most pigs. For true non-commercial use I generally just ask for a link. from dealers & private sellers. I ask that you don't steal and you do give fair credit to the creator. One is androstenone, a pheromone produced in the testes, but also the adrenal glands; the other is skatole, produced by bacteria in the intestines. 237 Favorite sausage? How many pigs does it affect? You will need to adapt things to your own soils, climate, resources, management style and other factors. They eat scraps and a soy based organic hog mix. Find out why high levels of skatole and/or androstenone can taint the meat, and what can be done to avoid it. It was so bd I had the meat sent out for lab testing in Florida. !, we were told we had to do it. It is really refression to see someone refuting the system and doing things in a better way in being more humane. I'm perplexed. I will generally say sure! However, unless you actively do that, and even then, don't expect privacy on the web. This is not a case of it taking two injections to make you sterile. Research shows that the vast majority of market age pigs, about six months, don’t have boar taint because they are too young in addition to possibly not being high taint even at older ages (pers. The gilts do not tend to actually take until their eight months old although there may be a lot of sex play prior to that. Other than that this site is completely child and adult safe as far as I know. The same holds true for emails you might send with questions or comments. If a piglet has a hidden hernia then when it is castrated the piglet’s intestines may shoot out of the cut in the scrotum resulting in extreme pain and death, especially if the intestines are cut during the castration. That said, I have had some people say that they had Red Duroc free of taint. All of this presupposes that the issue is genetic. Hello. Boar taint is a defect affecting certain sensory properties of meat (odour and taste). It isn’t a fun process for me or the pigs. I lived in England 30 years ago and never had a problem with this before. Alternatively, taste his sons. Boar taint is caused by two naturally occurring compounds known as androstenone (a pheromone which is responsible for a sweat/urine scent) and skatole (produced in liver and large intestine, responsible for an even less pleasant fecal aroma). As much as I dislike the idea of government attempts to micromanage our lives I can see a time down the road where routine castration is likely to be banned. I do have to question the logic of maintaining a breed that requires routine mutilation when there is a better way. I’m a farm girl. The second place hung the meat longer and we found less of an odor with his meat. Skatole is produced in the intestine and then stored in the fat. 6yr old boar butchered sunday,looks like no boar taint here. I see an ad for a good deal on a 5 year old Tamworth boar. I have been followibg you online for ten years or so. Once you have established your pig genetics are safe from taint then you are okay not castrating as long as you don’t introduce new genetics – e.g., a closed herd – which can be done for a very long time. These two compounds can accumulate in the fat of male pigs who have not been castrated. I don’t always smell the boar taint before the meat is cooked. One of the substances that causes boar taint, which the scientists are putting under the microscope, is … This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Pasturing and high fiber diets help reduce taint. They claim his genetics come from your farm. They might be avoiding taint because they were pasturing (good management) and not feeding a corn/soy diet (thus not a low fiber diet). (I’m undecided if it is really a flavor or merely an aroma.) When I’ve timed our sows they were very regular. Where do you buy? The flavor is good and very tender. theyre saying separate sexes and dont castrate to get efficint production and humaneness to. The controversial discussion about the components of boar taint between Danish and other investigations lead to the conclusion that at carcass weights below 80 kg skatole could be the major cause of boar taint while at higher weights androstenone becomes the important component. The older and heavier the boar, the more likely you’ll detect Boar Taint in the meat. Taint is caused mainly by two compounds, androstenone which is produced by the testes and skatole which is produced in the gut -- skatole is the reason why gilts and barrows (castrated males) can also have taint. If you found this article on my blog helpful I appreciate anything you can offer to help with server costs: 2015 October: Pigs on south field pasture with sheep. Research has shown that there are three endogenous substances that can cause boar taint: androstenone, skatole and indole. I’m beyond thrilled that I found your site and committed to not castrating my boys. I for one don’t want to be dependent on some big corporation for my breeding herd. That last thing in the world I want is more control of my life by corporations – they have one goal, suck the money out of my pockets at minimal expense to themselves. This is similar to the modern technique of ultra-sounding for loin depth. The major compounds responsible for boar tainted pork are androstenone and skatole, and both compounds are accumulated in fat. If you later want your name removed from the comment I'll probably accommodate you but I am not likely to delete old comments. I don’t like the idea of injecting one more chemical into our food supply. Of course. Taint is real, just rare, especially if you take some steps to avoid it through genetic selection (which may take testing), high fiber feed and other diet issues such as avoiding high corn/soy diets and management (e.g., out on pasture). Logs are accumulated. Or what I was told was boar taint. There is also evidence that a large part of the boar taint is caused by feed and handling (confinement) conditions so all of that should be addressed. Castration is a questionable practice for most pigs, and perhaps other animals as well. We went the way of the Idaho Pastured Pigs and crossed little guys with big pigs. Tiny Cottage: 70°F/68°F Dog house ceiling tests, sink tests. You retain copyright to your works but you implicitly give permission for me, the recipient, to publish the content. Although there are several advantages to raising intact male pigs instead of castrates, boar taint — an unpleasant odor that emanates from boar fat when it is heated — is a poten- … 5. It’s a valid argument. Hi Walter – we are giving it a go with not castrating two of our males and all will be ready for slaughter in one week (they just hit 6 months old today). After talking about this with her father, he indicated that she can tell the difference when buying pork from the supermarket. This is the same technique long used to improve the meat, e.g., loin size, and taste of livestock. The gilts seem “ready” so we are a little worried about pregnancy. Jojo, that’s a very reasonable question. i’m curious how do you breed the boar taint out? I was told by an old timer that the taint is caused by letting the outside of the hide touch the meat and that it was an excuse made by butchers who didnt do the job right. Unfortunate. You can also subscribe without commenting. Penning or dry lot as opposed to managed rotational pasturing is supposed to be a factor too in the secondary taint from skatole. That does sound like taint. So this year, because of customers balking about little pigs vs big pigs (the small homestead pig market is largely saturated, here- people are squeamish a lot about shooting and cutting up their own pig) cost effectiveness. I look forward to moving back to the US, where I’ve never had this problem before. The two natural substances that cause boar taint androstenona and skatole start to accumulate in the fat of male pigs when they sexually mature. Yes I guess that a stressed animal may pump out cortisol and increase adrenal androgens but I can not see how such a signal and short time constant between stunning and stress reach the testes. It is better to get on with the bleed process as that must happen quickly or you can get blood spotting. Boar taint is the offensive odor or taste that can be evident during the cooking or eating of pork or pork products derived from non-castrated male pigs once they reach puberty. Let's be real. That’s just a money making program for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer that doesn’t really solve the problem. It hit the intestine in two places, so we opted to put that one down rather than risk internal organs I fection and prolonged infection. For example, white pigs like the Yorkshires are generally low in taint whereas dark Duroc pigs are supposed to be high in taint from what I’ve heard and read. The odor my male pigs exhibit is to smell like isopropyl alcohol while only being cooked. The tests came out negative.