Piggies

Sunday night the pig went into labor. This was my first time ever working with a pig, so I felt somewhat unprepared and apprehensive for what I should do.

The first piglet was here at 9:30. The second one was here ten minutes later, but the rest took a long time. I stayed with them to get them dry and warm.

Somewhere after midnight she had two with deformed mouths and another that was a runt. I could not get the ones with deformities to eat.

At 2:00 in the morning she had her seventh piglet and passed what I thought was the placenta. I waited until about 2:30 before going in. She didn’t seem to be in labor anymore.

I left the piglets in the pen. I’d set up a heater in the corner. However, in the morning at chore time, there were five dead piggies–and five live ones. She’d had three more after I went inside, and they all died, along with the two with deformities.

The runt was not doing well. I took him inside and kept him in a basket on warm warm bottles, feeding him every couple of hours. That night I brought all the piglets into the bodega and kept them in a tub with a heater. It’s so cold at night here.

The runt was doing well yesterday. I fed him every hour or two. In the afternoon, I put him in with the others since it was over seventy degrees. He tried nursing, but the others shoved him away. He seemed weaker in the evening.

We fed him three more times before bed. Sadly, this morning he was gone when we went to check on them in the bodega. I’d brought them all in overnight again.

So out of ten, we have only four living. That has been a bit discouraging. I lost many hours of sleep over them in the past three days, but it wasn’t enough. That’s sad.

But we’re really happy with the four we have. The children named them Bacon, Ham, Sausage, and Hermoine. Another farm we know has a pig named Hermoine, so they wanted to match them.

I’m feeling pretty behind on sleep just now. I’d wanted to get to bed early tonight and catch up, but I noticed one of the does appears to be in labor. So, I have an alarm set for midnight to check on her. It’s too cold to let the kids drop without drying them off, I think.

Farm life in the winter.