1) Dr. Valerie Tynes, DVM.

TOPIC: Human directed aggression in the miniature pig.

Aggression is used to establish a relationship, not necessarily to establish dominance.
A pigs’ status determines which pig gets the greatest resources IE: the best food, sleeping space etc.
When putting two pigs together you should fence train them for a while. They will “size” each other up to determine their future relationship.
Once fence training is done put them in a neutral large area so they can avoid each other if they choose.
From Dr. Tynes’ research aggression is more common in small herds IE: 2 or 3 pigs.
Pigs do not groom each other. They are herd animals but not a “touchy” type of animal. Many times you will see 2 or 3 pigs sleeping with their heads at opposite ends of each other. Since pigs are not a “hooves on” type of animal, many may not like to be touched, especially around the heads.
Biting type of behavior is a “normal” behavior in pigs. You even see it in litters of babies. They romp and bite at each other.
From Dr. Tynes’ research, she has found that pigs weaned prior to 8 weeks of age or after 8 weeks are no more likely to become aggressive. Contrary to what I always thought. I thought TS was so aggressive because we took him from his mom at 4 weeks of age.
On the other hand, pigs with “restricted environments” tended to become aggressive later on in life. In TS’s case we took him from mom at 4 weeks and put in him a child's playpen in the living room, gave him a few small toys, turned on the TV then went to work. His life and environment were extremely restricted. In hind site I should have given him a MUCH larger area to play in, a rooting box, toys, etc. We needed to enrich his environment, not restrict it as we did. Environmental enrichment helps diminish aggression.
Per Dr. Tynes’ research 60% of households with only one pig have aggressive pig issues.
Farm pigs provided with straw in their pens had less incidents of tail biting than pigs without; again this is enriching the environment.
Exploratory rooting is normal development for pigs, it is not just a search for food.
A great toy for a pig is a heavy chain. You can dangle it from a tree or just let them root it around. I just purchased 6 feet of heavy chain for $8.00, can’t wait to see what our “boys” do with it.

2) Dr. Bruce Lawhorn., DVM

TOPIC: General pet pig veterinary care.

One of the most common causes of death in pbps is chronic kidney failure.
A good way to get a pig use to injections is to practice by poking (not hurting) your finger in the “V” near the neck, while they are eating. Do this on a regular basis, then when it is time to give an injection the pig should be accustomed to it and won’t freak out.
When using injectable to sedate a pig, use Telazal IM in the ham, 1 mg/lb. It has a 6 hour recovery time.
A good over the counter drug to help sedate a pig is Benadryl. (More about Benadryl below).
Aloha Vera is a GREAT healing ointment for skin issues in pbps. You can use fresh or processed.
If you suspect an accidental breeding, you should wait 21 days to make sure the pig does not cycle. If it does not, or if you suspect the pig is pregnant, then two injections of Lutalyse should be given. The first 8mg per 50 lbs IM, then 12 hours later 5 mg per 50 lbs IM. Abortion should occur within 1 to 3 days. Two injections are VERY important.
A humane way to euthanize is to provide a Xylazine overdose. 5 mg per lb, IM in the ham. Wait 10 to 15 minutes then give an intracardial injection using a 3 1/2” 18 gauge needle of barbiturate or KCL.
Normal urine pH in a pbp is 6 to 8.
Skin melanoma in black pigs can turn white or gray. This is actually a good sign.

3) Dr. Kristie Karli, DVM

TOPIC: Why veterinarians don’t like potbellied pigs and what you can do to help.

A good idea, especially for pet owners, is to take the heart rate and temperature of all your pigs and keep this information in your personal records. The first question a vet will ask you if you are calling with a sick pig is what is its heart rate and temperature. For base heart rate take it for 15 seconds and multiply by 4.
Send ALL medical records on potbellied pigs to the Duchess Fund at www.duchessfund.org. This includes records of healthy pigs as well as sick pigs. This web site is an invaluable aid in potbellied pig health.
If your pig dies and you want to have a necropsy done, make sure to have a pathologist look at the tissues, especially if cause of death cannot be determined. A pathologist is a specialist and has more experience looking at tissues samples than a general vet.
You can get your pig accustomed to having an ISO mask put over its snout by training it at home first. You can use any type of plastic container that will fit over a snout and rub lemon or peanut butter on the inside of the “mask”. Then place the makeshift mask on and off the pigs snout. It will smell/task good and the pig will be more relaxed at the vets getting the “real” mask put on its face. Also at the vets you can still rub the mask with lemon, smells better than the ISO gas does.
I have often wondered why we have had so many issues with pigs and ear cleanings. Many times when pigs are given cleaning solutions in their ears they end up deaf. Per Dr. Karli, the ear canal of a pbp is about the size of a pencil LEAD! That’s pretty narrow.
If you have a pig with ear infections it is a good idea to use a vet that specializes in dermatology look at it.

4) Penny Yocum, MS

TOPIC: Overview of nutrition for the potbellied pig. Do you know what your pig is eating?

Lipids provide 2 1/4 times more energy than carbohydrates. Also very good for skin and hair.
Soybean meal is a protein source that is highly digestible".
Legumes are high in protein.
A pbps feces or urine should not smell if their diet is formulated correctly.
One sign of selenium toxicity is if the hoof separates at the coronet band.
A pbp should consume 6 to 9% of its body weight in water. That is a LOT of water. Two cups of water weighs 1 lb. Therefore a 100lb pig would need to consume 12 to 18 cups of water a day to get what it needs!! Pigs that forage consume some water from the plants they eat. The rest is by water intake. We all know none of our pigs drink that much water, but this shows how important water consumption is to a pig.
If a pig looses up to 10% of its body weight they will die.
An adult pbp (1 1/2 years of age or older) needs approx. 9 to 12% protein in its diet. CP is the abbreviation for Crude Protein you might find on the back of a pig chow bag.
A strong ammonia smell in a pig’s urine can mean the pig has too much protein in its diet. Extra protein gets excreted through the urine.
Supplementing with alfalfa hay can off-balance the calcium levels of a pig especially one with compromised kidneys. Penny recommends supplementing with local (to your geographical area) grass hay. She recommends two handfuls of local grass hay a day especially for an indoor pig that cannot forage.
High fiber in a diet is good at around 16%. 3% fat is ok, but Penny would like to see 4 to 5%. Penny formulates pbp food with 5% fat. Beet pulp is also a great fiber source, which supplies energy to the pig, but sometimes it is hard to find in pbp feed.
To help a pig loose weight, feed a 16% fiber diet and supplement with local hay grasses.

5) Susan Armstrong

TOPIC: Adoption policies and procedures for companion pigs. Also she presented Nancy Shepherds presentation on farrowing.

A good potential pig parent is one who comes in to visit with a person’s pig(s) before they actually adopt, AND sits on the floor with them. I never put this into words before but Susan is right. I find the people who come in and plop on the floor make the best pig adopters.
A good way to tell if a pig is overweight without seeing it (IE: over the phone) is to ask the person the pigs’ weight. Susan uses a general rule of thumb: A pig will gain one pound a week, therefore a year old pig should weigh around 52 lbs. If it weighs more you can “generalize” the pig is overweight and/or it will grow to be a larger pig. If it is less than 52 lbs at one year, it might be an underweight pig and/or be smaller when full grown. But these are just general guidelines to use when you cannot visualize a pig.

6) Kim Saunders

TOPIC: Animal trust laws and www.Petfinder.com

Many states, such as California, have a law that allows you to put together a trust for your pets. This is a great idea. It allows you to spell out specific instructions for your animal(s) in a trust. Chris and I have put our animals in our wills and left a set amount of money for each animal. However this can lead to tax issues for the person/organization who is receiving the money and animals. By putting everything in a trust there should not be any tax or legal issues. And your wishes MUST be carried out as specified in your trust. If you just leave your animals to someone you have faith in… well they do not have to do anything you asked or put in your will. They can put the animal(s) down, and/or spend the money you specified for the animal(s) well being, any way they want.
For more information on California Pet trust law (and other states) go to: http://www.petfinder.org/journalindex.cgi?path=/public/animalissuesawareness/legalmatterspoliticalissues/1.39.2.txt
In your trust you can specify property to be left to the animal(s), method(s) property is to be dispersed IE: should the caregiver receive a monthly or yearly amount, as well as provisions for final disposition of the pet. All important things to remember.
You can include in your will words that state ALL taxes are to come out of your estate if you want a specified amount to go to a person you are leaving the animal(s) too. Otherwise, if you are not using a trust, and you leave an amount, lets say $5,000, then taxes will come out of the $5,000 leaving less money for the animal(s).
Petfinder has been a wonderful source for ALL kinds of animal adoptions across the country. They have libraries of information, message boards, volunteer database, and tons more. Check them out. You can go to www.petfinder.com and also check out their library section at www.petfinder.com/admin. And make sure to tell everyone about them. They are a great organization.
CPPA’s petfinder web address is http://www.petfinder.org/shelters/CA584.html

7) Dr. Arlen Wilbers, DVM

TOPIC: Actually he did not lecture. His presentation was all hands on learning in the field at Pig Pals sanctuary.

Pigs do not often show pain or illness. He thinks the reason is that in the wild an ill pig, or one showing signs of illness/pain, is the one that will be killed by a predator first. So they have learned through evolution to not show pain/illness. Because of this, when they do show symptoms or problems, they tend to decline fast. Dr. George told me years ago that if a pig does not eat for 24 hours, it is not a good sign, that they might be close to death. This makes sense to me.
When trimming a pigs hooves and tusks it is easier and safer to flip the pig on to its back, not to hold the pig in a vertical position, like we have done for years. Dr. Wilbers has trimmed several thousand pigs hooves and tusks by flipping them onto their backs without a problem. How many times have you heard of a pig having problems and/or dying from injectable anesthesia or even ISO gas. I have only heard of one pig that died by being put onto its back and the necropsy showed this pig had other health issues and might have died using any method to trim his hooves. But I know of many pigs that have died under ISO gas alone.
In the past, we were always told never to lay a pig on its back while trimming hooves/tusks, well that just aint so!! I saw it with my own eyes and EVEN did it myself. You straddle the pig like we do when we get them in the vertical position, but instead of sitting down and holding a struggling pig upright, you continue to lay them over onto their back. All 4 feet in the air. You then straddle the pig and turn your toes in, to slightly go under the pig and your hands are now free. You can trim the hooves by yourself or have someone else do it. Once you get the pig onto its back you can also sit on the ground and hold the pig between your knees, and again your hands are free. This method usually takes two people to do. By putting the pig on its back, it is so much easier on the humans and the pigs. Another form is to get the pig down for a belly rub, then grab his legs and quickly flip him onto his back, straddle him and away you go. Always be careful of their fragile legs no matter which method you use. Also with the pigs being directly on their back it cannot inhale a tusk during the trim, unlike in the vertical position. The pigs tend not to scream much at all in this position. Dr. Wilbers calls this the turtle syndrome. Once on their back, they become a turtle and just give up. This one thing alone, made the entire trip worthwhile.
It is not a good idea to vaccinate a pig while it is asleep under ISO or any type of injectable anesthesia. If the pig has an anaphylactic reaction to the injection you might not be able to tell since the pig is asleep. It is best to vaccinate while the pig is awake.
Dr. Wilbers' uses “cable cutters” (you can purchase these in many hardware stores) for cutting the upper tusks or what is sometimes called the "bristle tusks". These cut much better and more safely that the giggly/OB wire which can go astray when it hits the soft center of the upper tusk. He uses giggly wire on the bottom solid tusk, not the top ones.

8) My general notes:

Ever thought about what your local hospital does with their old, torn, stained blankets? Or what about your local hotels? ASK! Many will donate them to anyone/organization that will take them. What a great way for a sanctuary or even a multiple pig household, to obtain blankets. If you don’t know who to speak to ask for the Laundry Manager.
It was discussed that in California a new law has passed that states animals are no longer personal property, that they are now companion animals. As much as I would love to see this go through the state it appears to be a city by city issue. With cities like San Francisco and Berkeley having passed it. Unfortunately the entire state has not adopted this as the law, as of yet. But we ARE working on a state wide confinement crate bad. Keep your hooves crossed on that one.
There is a drug that is dispensed via nasal drops called Midazolam. This drug helps take the edge off (calm the pig down somewhat) the pig and in some cases, puts it nearly to sleep, long enough to mask the pig down using ISO. This is an option to using the injectable anesthesia along with ISO. Many mobile vets do not have a portable ISO machine so these drops might not be a good idea, as they might not put the pig to sleep far enough for you to work on. From what I learned of these drops, the pig is not completely asleep, just knocked down enough to make masking easier.
Dog and chicken feed are bad for pigs due to the sodium contents. They can be killers.
The use of over the counter Benadryl can help calm a pig down and even put it to sleep enough to work on for routine hoof and tusk trimming. For a 225 lb pig they started with 8 Benadryl pills, 25 mg each. Then every 20 minutes they gave two more for a total of 12 pills. The vet that calculated this was surprised that only 12 pills worked, she felt more like 16 to 17 pills would do the job for a pig this large. This is not to be done on a regular basis, only when necessary for routine care when the pig cannot be flipped on its back as discussed earlier.
There is a new wormer on the market, Dectomax. It seems to be much better than Ivomec but works exactly the same way. Here is the comparison: Ivomec kills parasites up to 9 days, Dectomax, up to 18 days. The life cycle of mange is 12 to 15 days. Also Dectomax, kills a wider spectrum of parasites. So by my book Dectomax is the way to go. It is an injectable drug but can be given orally just as we have been doing with Ivomec, same dosing, 1 cc per 75lbs of body weight. It is available from the usual feed stores and on line.

I hope you have not gotten too bored reading this article and I that you have learned a thing or two like I did. My trip to the PBP Symposium was invaluable and I hope to attend the 2004 event in Iowa.
©2003 by Marcie Christensen