Castrating your boars will make them less nuts!

One of the little things they don't tell you when you start out raising pigs is that pigs do not give birth to all females.  Nope.  In fact, in my particular case, my sow seems to give birth to mostly males.  Now, many of you may think to yourselves, "So?  What's wrong with mostly males?"  Well, my interested little phantom readers, males come with two things that can make the difference between succulent, juicy, flavorful pork

... and nasty, filthy, unpalatable protein-cake. 

Balls.  Nuts.  Testicles.  Frat-boy-brains.

And, naturally, pigs are nothing like any other livestock out there.  I was watching dad with his nifty little pliers and rubber bands with the calves.  It looked so simple.  When it came to the lamb, again, awesome rubber bands.  5 seconds, no pain, no blood, and in 14 days, you had effectively created a eunuch.  BUT NOT WITH PIGS!  LIES!  ALL LIES!!!

No, you see, with pigs, you have to actually make a small incision and squeeze those suckers out of there.   Well, sure, they're probably sedated right?  WRONG!  They're not sedated. They're very much aware of what's going on.  And they communicate this with their siblings.  They scream, "OMG, GET THE HELL AWAY FROM THE CRAZY LADY WITH THE KNIFE!"

They don't have any nerve endings around that area, and in fact, when you're cutting, they don't notice, move, or make a peep.  It's not until you start squeezing their balls, yes, squeezing their balls, that they notice something is NOT quite right with the fellow who is holding them on their back, and that suddenly, the woman with the donuts who has come to see them every day of their life is no better than the witch in Grimm's Hansel and Gretel!  And then all hell breaks loose.  They start screaming, I start crying, dad's shouting at me that I'm a real farmer now.  It's all very traumatic.  And then, almost as quick as it began, it ends, and a very pissed off little piglet goes running into the pen to hide amongst the lucky females that didn't have to undergo the surgery.

In the meantime, the other males are piled on top of each other, fighting to be the one on the bottom for a change, because that means you'll be less likely to be picked next.

And yes, while this all results in tasty, awesome pork, and really was only removing from the pigs something they were never going to use, and up until that point had no idea for their purpose other than they were theirs, all theirs, for a brief moment in their life, for many many days following, they gave me the stink eye.   Huddled with their sisters, they would never take their eyes off of me.  They'd run, all piling into a corner, hiding from the evil witch with a knife. 

So yeah, nothing's ever easy, and remember, unless you live in China, gender selection is simply not an option here.