Meet Pokey

This is Pokey. It was noticed that Pokey had a rather large abscess. The area around his right eye was swollen. This ended up being something that we couldn't take care of ourselves, due to the nature of the abscess and its location. Pokey was checked out by one of our veterinarians while under anesthesia. There was a hole that was visible next to his eye. She put a probe in to see where it led, it went all the way behind his eye. The abscess was located behind his eye.

She was able to drain his abscess as much as possible and then insert the catheter that you see. It goes into the hole and is attached to his forehead. This enables us here at Ironwood to flush it so that an infection does not develop.

Abscesses are VERY common here. We have a few with large abscesses right now that we must lance and drain. They are under close observation and put into our pens. These must be watched carefully for they can turn into messy infections if not taken care of and monitored. We have one girl out in our "Lifers" pens. It had been lanced and now we are just monitoring it for extra pus. It has been doing well.

If you are unsure of what an abscess is, it is basically a collection of pus that occurs when tissue gets infected. The surrounding area then gets inflammed. These are painful, especially when they occur in an area such as the mouth. You can imagine how painful eating would be.

It's also very important that we find out if swelling on a pig is an abscess or not. Sometimes it is, but sometimes it ends up being an infection, tumor or some form of cancer.

You can imagine the vet bills that Ironwood has. Abscesses are just one of the many common medical issues we have here. Without receiving the necessary attention the pigs would be in serious pain and many issues could lead to death.


Despite his current, guarded condition Pokey is still very friendly and loves being rubbed. Check out this smile!