28 February, 2011
One of our Berkshire sows is farrowing at the moment.
Of course, it has to be the wrong sow!
We should have had one sow, Delilah, moving out to the field with her litter at the weekend.
The farrowing pen would then have been cleaned and the other sow, Daphne, brought in to the pen to deliver her litter.
But nature and the sows said, “No, we’re not going with Two-Legs’ Master Plan”.
And that was that.
Instead, Daphne is farrowing two weeks earlier than her due date, which means she’s still out in the field. She’s delivered five small but strong piglets so far.
Meanwhile, Delilah is still in the farrowing pen and is two weeks past her due date.
She’s now so huge she can’t lie on her side as her rear and fore ends hang down from the bump!
I’m now busy trying to re-organise everything around the new plan.
I don’t know what breed she was, but the sow I ‘knew’ as a child used to make the most amazing noises when she had a new litter. She was also very amenable to the piglets being handled, which made me love her to bits!
Ours are all happy to have their piglets handled. We selected breeding sows for their good natures, plus we’ve trained them to be used to us. The two Mermaid sows, Doris and Delilah, are even happy for the boys to go in one at a time to see and touch the piglets. Daisy is too unpredictable, with or without piglets, while Daphne is only really comfortable with me when she has piglets. She tolerates the OH and vet but is wary. Without piglets, she’s fine with anybody.
As for noises, yes, I know what you mean. Our pigs have extensive vocabularies. When I came through the byre just now, Delilah asked for early dinner. And got it.
Eleven piglets delivered now. Some quite tiny ones as they’re premature. They can’t all reach the “top deck” so I’ve had to hold half of them up to get their initial colostrum. We’ll probably lose a couple, but they are strong and with a good slurp of colostrum inside them they have a chance.
Pigs … they never do as you want!
I really miss the sound of a sow singing to her litter. It’s one of the most peaceful in the world – and it’s not often you get to say that about pigs!
Do you think somehow your pigs read this blog?
Well, they have wi-fi enabled huts and I’m sure at least two of them have iPhones…
We love checking and reading your blog. I dream of someday having a little farm, but until then it’s time in my garden planting and harvesting wherever I can squeeze in a veggie or two. Oh well…until then, my time will be split between our backyard and the office. ;0)
Poor things, to be so small. Hoping with both fingers crossed that they all make it. And that Daphne won’t try to roll on them again.
Oops my fault, I meant Delilah. Since they are so small do you think you will have to add an extra heat source, or extra care for them being premies ?
All of Daphne’s piglets made it through the night. When I went out in dawn’s early light to check them, I found the two largest piglets out exploring the field. In the frost. They were most put out at being returned to the hut, although they soon settled in for breakfast.
The two smallest piglets were lethargic, probably through not being able to compete for the lower teats and not being able to reach the higher ones. I held them up to the top teats for a five-minute suckle and both bounced back with vigour. When I left them, they were enthusiastically competing with their siblings for teats.
Helping the smallest ones get colostrum and milk for the first 24 hours is about as far as we go in helping the piglets. Well, that and getting the sow off them if she rolls on them while we’re around. Piglets have to be robust to survive and we’re doing them no favours if we put a huge amount of effort into saving weaker ones that will never grow well. With full-term litters, we don’t even help the small ones suckle.
The litter is down to eight piglets now. We lost the smallest one after lunch yesterday. It had a fever and died quickly. It was almost certainly too small and underdeveloped for its immune system to cope with all the challenges thrown at it.
The largest piglet died of hypothermia during the early hours of the morning. It wandered out of the hut, across the pen and into a large puddle of part-frozen water where it froze in the overnight frost.
The second largest piglet was crushed under Daphne within the last 20 minutes or so. It was alive when I checked at 0825 but dead at 0850.
As we need at least 10 piglets per litter to survive to weaning to break even—on last year’s input costs and price—that’s another litter that’s going to dip into the red. I suspect it will be worse once I do this year’s input costs. To make matters worse, all three piglets were gilts and that’s what customers demand. Increasingly few customers are prepared to take boars, even though there’s no difference when they’re going for pork.