louie – the potbellied pig – neutered

LOUIE – THE POTBELLIED PIG – NEUTERED
Louie came to us as an adorable 11.1 lb true pot bellied pig, at 4 months old.
We can tell that Louie is going to be a true miniature pig due to his weight at this
age. A lot of people buy a supposed pot bellied pig and by 4 months old, it is already
pushing 30 lbs! Before a year is up, they have a gigantic 100+ lb pig roaming the
house!
Louie needed to be neutered because he was starting to emit a very boar-type
smegma odor from his prepuce … a natural hormone phenomena similar to an intact
male cat strong urine odor.
The other means that we knew that Louie is going to be true miniature pot belly pig
is that his testicle size was very large for his little body.
One very common occurrence in miniature pot belly pigs is that they have either
scrotal or inguinal hernias. This can be life threatening during and after surgery if
not diagnosed. It appeared that Louie did not have this problem, however at
castration, extra precaution was taken to put in extra sutures at the inguinal site
just to be safe
Being so small, the typical preanesthetic medication given intravenously was next to
impossible since Louie’s veins were next to impossible to find. Therefore a
modification was selected. A sub-cuticular injection was given to keep his heart rate
from going to slow during anesthesia and this also kept excessive saliva from being
produced. Another sedative was also administered in the muscle along with a drug
similar to valium. This gave us good sedation and allowed us to mask him down the
rest of the way with the gas anesthetic called isoflorane. When sufficiently relaxed,
we intubated him with a endotracheal tube, as seen coming from his mouth in the
following picture:
Fortunately, Louie was no larger, because the endotracheal tube had to be placed
into his trachea blindly by touch since a pig’s mouth is so long. Any larger, and even
the doctor’s fingers would have been too short to accomplish this.
Surgery went without complications. You can see from the accompanying blood
pressure report (measured every 2 minutes), EKG, and pulse ox/body
temp/respiration rates (measured every 5 minutes) that all values were maintained
very well during surgery. This is the same type of safety monitoring as is done in
most surgeries in our clinic.
During surgery, we also removed the ‘fang’ teeth that pigs have, that can grow into
large sharp and dangerous teeth.
You can see Louie waking up peacefully in his owner’s lap after surgery.
Louie, being a miniature pot bellied pig, needs to have vaccination protection for
some common pig diseases. These include:
- Erysipelas (a high fever lameness that can be fatal)
- Rhinitis (an infection often carried from birth causing the snout to
become deformed and stripped of its internal filter)
- Lepto (causes fatal kidney infections and possible spread to people)
- Mycoplasma (causes severe pneumonia common to pigs)
Louie received his first round of these.
We look forward to having Louie as a friend and patient for many years to come!