How to Trim Your Potbellied Pig's Hooves | Pet Pigs

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Hoof trimming is a very important for the pigs. You need to do it as frequently as the pig needs it. If he's walking on a surface that is porous like a driveway, stepping stones outside, that type of thing, you're going to find that your hooves are just fine. If the pig's pasterns go down, if he is not walking like he's walking on high heels and the weight of the pig or the conformation of the pig goes down then those hooves are going to continually grow and you're going to need to keep them trimmed so frequently you'll need to have a hoof trim. Now if you're not close to a veterinarian that can do your hoof trim and you're depending on yourself to do it, you should do it at a quiet time when you and the pig are very relaxed and you can use these two tools. This one is straight nose, very sharp, you actually should wear some gloves on this so you don't cut yourself, and this will do the majority of the work if the hoof isn't too overgrown or too long. If the hoof is way too long you're going to need something like these pony nippers and it puts a lot of pressure on that toe and it's able to cut it off quite easily. So with those two tools you should be able to trim just about any pig's hooves.

Churchill doesn't really need his hooves trimmed, he hasn't really even had a hoof trim but it doesn't take much. Just a little clip here and a little clip there and oh, my goodness, we're done. Churchill lives most of his life outdoors and he's on gravelly areas so his hooves hardly ever need trimming. If your pig is not letting you give him a hoof trim it's really important that you seek another option. You can try to find a veterinarian in your area or you can contact another pig expert that might know where to go to get a qualified veterinarian. There are a couple of ways that veterinarians take care of hoof trimming. One is by actually giving them a gas, isoflurane, and then doing the trimming while they're under. I don't recommend that if you can avoid it but that is an option. So the other way a veterinarian can do it is actually just picking up the pig and flipping him on his back and trimming the hooves.