What to do with old boars? Boar Taint - it’s a thing!
When you breed pigs, you will at some point have to decide what to do with your old boar, especially if you want to keep gilts and need to change genetics.
If you raise Berkshires, you will likely be attached to the old guy, and that does make it a hard decision - do you just keep him by himself, move him on for someone else to deal with or suck it up and deal with it yourself?
We deal with our own.
Your choices are limited because boar taint is a thing!
A friend of mine sent me this! (She lives in a different province so can’t buy our pork)
YES, this is what we call Boar Taint
Boars are uncastrated males
It absolutely is a thing, but not everyone can smell it. Women are more likely to smell it than men.
What is boar Taint
It is an unpleasant odour and taste found in meat from some (not all) entire male pigs.
Male pigs produce androsterone, a male sex hormone, and skatole, a digestive by-product formed in the intestines.
The production of androsterone and skatole is responsible for boar taint,
Once you have experienced boar taint, you likely won't eat pork for a long time.
Carl and I used to work in a processing plant, and we occasionally got boars in.
Boars can be used for human consumption, but not everyone can detect the taint, so it can be a hard call. The meat inspectors in the plant we worked in used to heat a small piece of fat from any boars that came in.
Any that were deemed fit for consumption often went to make sausage, like pepperoni - but if the taint is there, no amount of spices is going to hide it. Take it from someone who can smell it!
In this case, size is irrelevant! We once had an 80lb boar with taint - which we fed to the dogs.
We castrate all our meat pigs, BUT not all farmers do - because some don't think boar taint is a thing!
Did you know that some gilts can also have taint? It's a very small percentage, but it can happen.
What can you do if you have a pig processed and it has boar taint?
It is one of those smell things that you can taste - You aren’t supposed to taste it, but once you smell it, you can taste it, if that makes sense, and the smell sticks with you, and it is hard to stomach the thought of eating the meat.
The only advice I can give you is the same I gave my friend - that was to get her husband to cook it outside on the bbq it or smoke it - he is lucky and can't smell it.
Some people will tell you to make it into pepperoni, but I wouldn’t throw any more money at it - that’s just me - I would feed it to my dogs.
So what do you do with that old boar?
If you look online, you’ll find plenty of advice suggesting you castrate a mature boar and isolate him for 6 weeks to get rid of taint.
Most of these people are not using vets to castrate these poor old boars, and they are not using humane methods or pain management, so please don’t do it! It is extremely cruel and incredibly dangerous for both animal and handler.
So how do you go about castrating a 700lb boar? If you absolutely need the meat for human consumption, you should talk to your vet about castration, though the cost and risks involved will likely not be worth it.
On our farm, we have a lot of dogs that are fed a raw diet, and on the rare occasion we do need to replace a boar, we get them properly processed specifically for the dogs.
This isn’t a cheap option, and I could buy raw dog food cheaper, but it isn’t about that - it’s about not wasting anything and knowing what’s going in my dogs’ bowls!
Do you want to start raising your own pork?
Check out my beginner’s guide to raising free-range pigs for more practical tips.
Based on our experiences free ranging pigs in Saskatchewan, this downloadable guide is packed with tips on housing, feeding, watering, fencing and handling pigs.