Mixed gender pigs....

[tripleh]

Well in all the years I have been doing or own butchering, I have finally seen something rather strange! I recently butchered four pigs, all purebred Durocs. I personnlay prefer Yorkshire or York cross pigs for meat but this past year I had a hard time even finding piglets close to us... still had to travel 150 miles to pick them up Anyway, the lady I got them from had AI'ed her sow to what I think was a terminal boar. I bought the piglets and they did fine during the winter although I did notice a couple of the gilts (I had 3 gilts and a barrow) were really scappy... as in they liked to fight each other.

When I butchered them and was skinning them out I thought the two scrappers had very coarse hair for gilts... then as I skinned thier belly area I got a bit of a surprise! They each had a set of testicles tucked up near thier belly! When I opened up thier abdominal cavity to clean them out, they both had perfectly formed female organs although they were smaller than one ususally sees! I wish now I had taken the time to nip to the house to get the camera for a picture... but I just wanted to get all four of them in the cooler as it was a cold and nasty day.

The meat is excellent by the way... I just finished curing and smoking 210lbs of ham, bacon and smoked pork chops... but I was wondering if anyone else has run across this "mixed gender" issue. I am wondering if it is due to the terminal boar the lady used. I have contacted her as I wanted to let her know for future reference... she is pretty new to pig raising.

Rose

[Mitra]

No idea! But what an interesting find Glad the meat tastes great too.

What is a terminal boar?

[Kim in VA]

Same question here: What's a terminal boar?

Too bad you couldn't get pictures, would have been interesting. DH has seen a few hermaphrodites at his practice over the years. I'm guessing that's what these were but very unusual that you would have had 2!

Kim in VA

[tripleh]

A terminal boar is one that is used... or is supposed to only be used... for breeding to a sow when all the piglets will be used for meat. It is usually NOT recommended that you keep any offspring for breeding purposes. They tend to be extremley heavily muscled pigs that are supposed to grow quickly but to me they look like a body builder on excessive steroids I have always steered away from using such boars or getting pigs from sows bred to terminal boars... but in this case I had no idea until the piglets were growing. I thought it very odd that 2 out of the bunch had problems. I should also say that she let me have a fifth piglet at a reduced cost because he had retained testicles, they never dropped. I checked him over and there was not even an opening in his abdominal wall, so since I knew he would be sterile and I decided I would butcher him early as a bacon pig, I bought him. He was doing well, although very stunted, then one morning I went out to feed them thier skim milk and he had died during the night. I now wish I had opened him up to see what was what...

Rose

[Liz]

That is so weird, especially to have two!

[Tricia]

Wow, that is strange, especially more than one. I wonder if this would come from inbreeding a bit? Some strange things do happen.

I am going to ask the butcher next week if they've seen this before. Atleast the meat tasted good!

[sallymcd]

What would happen if a boar was XY or XXY and had a tendency to gave tri-somy (on the gender chromosome) to his offspring? Could an XXY be fertile?

[Janene]

I have seen lots of those...we called them "he-she's". Pretty wild when you tossed in all the 'boys' in a cart to castrate and there is a gilt the lot! (We castrated anywhere from 100-250 piglets on a daily basis at 3-ish days old.) I bet we would come across at least one a month, sometimes there would be more, sometimes less.
Yes, we 'cut' them, too, but never knew if they would ever go on to re-produce or not. They were all raised for butcher. I highly doubt they would re-produce, kind of like freemartinism in heifers. Lots of them would have other 'problems' when we cut them, like a hernia, or rupture and we would have to fix and stitch them up.

I think alot of it stems from years of 'selective' genetic breeding for certain (meat conformity) traits.
Janene

[tripleh]

Hmmm.... that is a good question. I know when I looked at the "gilts" I butchered, the testicles were definitly not well formed and being so tight inside the belly skin the heat would have rendered any sperm infertile. Thier uterus was small yet, however, thier vulvas were slightly swollen as if they were starting a heat cycle. There was little to no swelling or "pinkness" you ususally see on the uterus when you butcher a gilt that is in season.

[catherine]

Speaking of gilts in season...please tell me a bit about it? I have 2 six month old gilts, and we're thinking about keeping one to breed. These are my first two pigs, and I know very little beyond the stage we're at now. So...what symptoms do you see when they go into heat? How often do they cycle? How long do their heats last, and how fast do you have to get them to a boar, or AI them? I know their pregnancies last "three months, three weeks, and three days", but that's about it. Thanks!

And yes, I think that's very interesting about the hermaphroditism in your pigs. The first time I ever saw anything about something like this was in a classical statue at the Vatican Museum in Rome! There was a naked, life sized He-She statue there! Most freaky to a young adult mind...still is...lol...but I've since heard that this sometimes happens to people, too. Can you imagine the fix that person would be in??? Who am I?