Holly Taste Testing a Boar
Get in some new boars and one’s considerations go to an old story…
There was this city fellow driving out in the country who passed a farm where he sees an old man sitting out on the porch with a three legged pig hopping around in the yard. The fellow backs up and pulls into the driveway to investigate.
Getting out he goes up to the farmer and says, “Good morning, sir. I couldn’t help but notice your pig only has three legs. What happened to his other leg? Did he get attacked by coyotes, a gator or fall in a leg trap?”
“And good morning to you young fella” replies the farmer, “no, it wasn’t anything like that. You see this pig is a very fine pig. Once my wife was cooking bacon and she stepped out of the kitchen. The grease caught on fire. No one in the house knew about it but the pig and he saved me, my wife and my three kids.”“That’s amazing sir, but why does that pig only have three legs?” asked the man.
“Then there was that time the pig saw a big flood coming and we didn’t. The pig ran into the house and dragged us out up on the hill. If it weren’t for that pig we would all be dead.”
“Well, that is quite the miracle but how come that pig only has 3 legs?” the man said rather annoyed at all this dissembling.
“Well,” said the farmer, “with a pig that special… you can’t eat him all at once.”
It’s an amusing story but sometimes you really do want to have your pig and eat it too. This issue comes up with breeder pigs. Especially when bringing in new genetics in to the herd since I don’t want to bring in boar taint.
In the past I did my taste testing post slaughter by eating progressively older boars to test them for taint but that makes it rather hard to then breed the pigs. That method isn’t going to work with the new Berkshire breeder boar Spitz who we aquired this month. I don’t want to slaughter him to taste him nor do I want to take the two years that we did to prove out the genetics in the past by tasting the offspring.
So how to do it? How to have your pig and eat it too? I suggested to Holly that I simply take a small bite and see what he tasted like. She laughed and said that Spitz might object to that. But, I had a plan. A man with a plan am I.
Biopsy Tool and a Little Bit(e) of a Big Boar
With wildlife, biologists routinely take small biopsies. There are special tools made for doing just this. I bought a set and a biopsying I went. Ironically, I got my biopsy tools from a tattoo, body art and piercing store. These are medical, human grade, stainless steel tools so I figured they would work well enough for the boars.
Interesting Taint Factoids:
Most boars don’t have taint at market age.
Taint is not found in a most pig breed lines.
Lighter colored pig breeds are less likely to have taint.
Some research suggests Red Duroc has a high incidence of taint.
There is a breed where even females have ‘boar’ taint.
Taint is genetic, that is to say heritable.
Only about 75% of people can smell taint.
Statistically women can smell taint a little more than men
but some women can’t just as some men can’t smell taint.
There are many kinds of taint besides ‘boar’ taint.
True boar taint is caused primarily by two chemicals:
Skatole produced in the small intestines;
Adrostenone produced in testes and adrenal glands.
There are several other less common chemical taints.
Stress at slaughter can cause taint that is often confused with boar taint.
Improper bleed out causes blood taint – often confused with boar taint.
Improper carcass chilling causes taint – ibid.
Confinement raising increases the odds of skatole based taint.
High corn/soy diets increase the odds of taint.
High fiber diets reduce the odds of taint.
Boars grow about 10% faster than barrows and are better at converting feed into meat.
Barrows (castrated males) grow about 10% faster than gilt pigs.
Gilts (females) tend to have the most fat and slowest growth.
Nearly nothing is absolute in the real world.
Take everything with a grain of salt,
Especially bacon.
Both Spitz, the new Berkshire boar, and Hamlet, the new Tamworth boar, didn’t object to the sampling. They’re pretty big boys and I was only taking a 12 cubic-mm sample. I had been prepping them for this day for well over a week by training them to accept the movements I would do to take the biopsy. To them it probably felt like getting a shot at most. I slapped the biopsy spot as I took the sample and I suspect that distraction was more noticeable than the actual biopsy. Penn & Teller would be proud.
So we took a few very little bits of our new boars, fry them up and pass the bacon around for everyone to try. No need to waste the whole pig when all you want is a tiny bite. The verdict was no boar taint in either of them. Yeah!
And that folks, is why our boars still have all four legs.
For more about boar taint try this search pattern.
Outdoors: 73°F/43°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 74°F/64°F
Daily Spark: I’m not an Atheist. I’m not an Agnostic. I’m a Sceptic. I believe, in reason. I have faith in mathematics. 1+1+1 = 11
