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Production only of entire (uncastrated) males

With this approach, no surgical or pharmacological treatment is applied to pigs, and their genital tract is allowed to develop normally and remains intact until they are slaughtered. Testing and sorting the carcasses is necessary to ensure that tainted ones are not commercialized as fresh meat or in particular meat products such us as dry cured ham.

Advantages and Disadvantages compared to surgical castration without anaesthesia:

1

Compared to surgical castration without anaesthesia, what do you expect the advantages and disadvantages of producing only entire (uncastrated) males to be?
For each of the factors below, indicate whether you think that the technique will bring an advantage, a disadvantage or will have a neutral impact, choosing from the pull-down list.

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b)
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f)
g)

Yes all your choices are correct.

  1. Pain, stress and health consequences = Advantage because the pigs are not submitted to any surgical procedure
  2. Incidence of boar taint appearing in meat products = Disadvantage because, as you have already seen in the tutorial, entire male pigs can develop boar taint
  3. Cost of feeding = Advantage because the uncastrated pigs have better feed conversion
  4. Proportion of lean meat in the carcass = Advantage because entire male pigs have leaner carcasses compared to castrated ones.
  5. Levels of aggression and mounting behaviour in the herd, and ease of management = Disadvantage. Uncastrated pigs may show higher aggressive and mounting behaviour, which may affect the low-ranking animals. Management may be more difficult for producers.
  6. Need for slaughter line system to detect boar taint = Disadvantage. As shown before, their carcasses can be tainted. A reliable and cost effective on line method of detection will be needed to sort out tainted carcasses
  7. How practical the technique is for use at farm level = Advantage because there is no extra procedure needed.
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