Yesterday afternoon we carried out the notching of the ears of our 5 (out of 10) herd-standard pedigree saddleback piglets, an operation I had been absolutely dreading doing, and thought I would report for others in the same predicament that it was surprisingly easy and virtually noiseless! The piglets are just over 5 weeks old, therefore still with mum, so we timed it for when she was scoffing away at tea time and entirely pre-occupied on her favourite activity - eating. There was a small bit of noise picking up the piglets, but almost no reaction at all when the notch was cut - to our absolute amazement! At the instant of cutting the notch there was no blood at all, this arrived about 5 -10 seconds later, but not a huge amount. Most of them had to have 2 notches and only one had to have 3. Much more difficult was targeting the notch with either/both Stop Bleeding Fast spray and the purple antiseptic spray. All 5 piglets immediately rejoined the others rushing around searching for nuts scattered on the ground, and seemed totally unbothered to have had chunks cut out of their ears. All bleeding was over within an hour, and this morning the notches are dried up and clean and look like they have been there for ever!! So for other saddleback owners who are reluctantly contemplating notching - it really isn't nearly as bad as you think, and most importantly, the piglets themselves, and their mum, seemed quite unphased by the whole thing - Tamsaddle
Topic: Phew! notching over, successfully (Read 2085 times)
