The Daily Oink!

Hello, and welcome back to my blog. ( The Daily Oink! )

My name is Nevaeh, and I am going to be talking about pig ear notching.

Pig notching is used for identification on pigs. Methods to distinguish individual pigs by marking their ears with a series of nicks and holes.

How pig notching works is that the right ear is connected with the litter number. The left ear is connected by the individual pig number. A common system that uses a grid with values like 1, 3, 9, and 81. It’s best to perform notching when the pigs are very young, ideally with the first week of life, to ensure it’s done efficiently. https://extensionpubs.unl.edu/publication/g1880/na/html/view

https://mercyforanimals.org/blog/meat-industry-mutilates-piglets/

Why they use this is because unlike ear tags, notches are permanent marks that cannot be lost or damaged in the long term. It allows farmers to fallow an individual pigs life, including health and performance issues. Notching is a requirement for identification in the show world for swine in the FFA and 4-H projects. https://nefb.wordpress.com/2016/06/10/why-do-pigs-have-notches-in-their-ears/

https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/as/as-556-w.pdf

There is always a question. That question is does it hurt the pigs when they’re getting notches done?

After ear notching piglets can attempt to escape, squeal, head-shake all behaviors, including piglets find the procedure stressful and painful.

https://pin.it/senkzMMsh

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