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Goose87
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« on: May 02, 2021, 09:37:30 am » |
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I have a skull from an old Barr hog I caught in the swamp across the hwy from my house in 09, his teeth had curled and grew back into his head, he was just a hair over 450 but had a little frame and for a hog of his weight had a smaller track, but he was FAT, he had so much fat on him the processing plant made my sausage for free in exchange for all the fat scraps, anyways in this particular section on the swamp and old man and his sons still worked hogs, they trapped yr round and released every sow and cut every single male and turned back out, there were some old dinosaurs roaming around there, this individual hogs skull was much much heavier than a skull of same proportion and size from younger hogs, it is just more dense and heavy and isn’t really smooth, more like calcification pores and small pen like holes all over it, I’ve always assumed it was bc he was so old....
I think regional diet combined with genetics plays a big role on a hogs teeth, Molars in particular, to wear down, I also believe it plays a big part in cutter girth and length, I also think that the mineral content of the soil in different regions plays a much bigger role in tusk length that what has been discussed, I know a good deal of it is regional genetics but let’s look at critters from the west Texas areas, particularly white tails and hogs, the deer will be smaller bodies with freakish huge racks, even before the days of high fence and trophy management, same with the hogs, just about every boar with just a little age on him has a fine set of shanks...
I’ve seen and read countless articles on deer and antler management and one of the very first things that’s mentioned is HIGH PROTEIN, protein produces muscle growth and development, it doesn’t have a hill of beans to do with antler or tusk growth, antlers and tusk are not made of muscle, they’re minerals, if you want to grow bigger antlers and tusk then supplement their diets with the same stuff that they’re made of, it would be interesting to do a small scale study of wild caught penned up hogs and one group fed a regular base diet and another group fed same base diet but with mineral supplementation just to see if and how much tusk growth could be easily influenced by diet supplements...
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