This week the number of pigs on the farm nearly doubled from 12 to 23. Our gilts Caitlan and Bon Bon had their piglets! Three weeks ago we moved them to their own farrowing pasture with a roomy house built out of straw bales. We elected to keep the girls together since they were due to farrow within two days of each other, they have lived together their whole lives, and two pigs are warmer than one and we have had some very cold nights.
Caitlan was due on February 24th but she waited two days so she could have her babies in a snow storm. It seems to be an accepted fact amoung many who raise animals that expecting moms prefer to give birth in terrible weather. Is this an evolutionary adaptation to weed out the weak? Perhaps it is to avoid predators less likely to be lurking in bad weather. Or does is just seem like they choose bad weather to us, their custodians?
On the morning of the 26th I went out to take care of the girls and found Caitlan in the hut nursing five new babies. There was a 6th piglet that had died before it was fully dried off. We do not know whether it was stillborn of if it was crushed. Crushing is a real hazard for baby pigs. They are just tiny little things compared to their massive mothers, and even if she is careful she can accidently make a piggy pancake when laying down or rolling over. Crushing is also more of a risk in cold weather when everyone is trying to snuggle up, and also for new pig moms like ours. In conventional hog production, piglets are often born in special farrowing crates that hold mom in a chute just large enough for her to lie down while allowing the piglets to move around. We’d rather let mom have her freedom and choose where to have her babies, even if that means we lose some to crushing.
The following morning one piglet was not doing well. She was weak and unable to stand. We brought her into the house and placed her in a laundry basket with a heat lamp, a.k.a. piglet NICU. I was about to say this is the first livestock we have had in the house but this is not true. A little over a year ago we revived a cold wet pullet under a heat lamp in the tub. I had already been getting up in the night to feed and water the chicks in the brooder so what’s getting up a couple more times to feed an infant pig?
When Caitlan’s babies were three days old and Bon Bon’s babies three days overdue, I came walking up to the farrowing pasture to find Bon Bon crunching away with just a little piglet foot sticking out of her mouth. Oh my god, I thought, she’s eating Caitlan’s piglets! I hurried to check on the babies. Four in the hut plus the one still in the house meant all Caitlan’s little ones were accounted for. Bon Bon’s backside was clean and belly still full of squirmy babies, so it wasn’t one of hers. We concluded that Cailtan must have had another baby, bringing her total up to seven, that got crushed and buried in the hay bedding shortly after birth. Bon Bon found it while “nesting”, i.e. digging around in the hay and generally trying to tear down the shelter in preparation for having her babies.
Some folks say that it is bad for momma pigs to eat the dead babies because it will make them more likely to kill and eat the live ones. I am pretty sure that a pig knows the difference between a dead baby and a live one. And there are plenty of good reasons to eat a dead piglet. It is good sanitation, it prevents luring predators and scavengers, and it reclaims nutrition that mom used up growing that baby. Not all farm moms are good moms, and a pig that kills and eats piglets ends up on the dinner table herself. A sow may also kill and eat her babies if there is something seriously wrong with her nutrition.
Because Bon Bon was nesting we knew her babies would be arriving soon! That and it was starting to rain. She went into labor that evening, and had delivered six squirming piglets and placenta (our cue that she was done) by 9 pm. Some of the little ones went the wrong way around Bon Bon and found Caitlan’s milk bar first. I tried rearranging them but it was no use. Co-parenting in action.
The next morning I found Bon Bon nursing all ten babies – hers and her sister’s. Caitlan was not returning the favor, nursing only her own. Bon Bon’s newborns just could not compete with their older cousins, so we decided it was necessary to divide the litters so that the new piglets would get the colostrum and milk they needed. As for the piglet in the house, she had gotten a lot stronger over her two days in NICU so we put her back with her siblings. Still, she could not fight her way to a teat. We put her in with Bon Bon’s newborns and she seems to be doing fine. Later that day Bon Bon found another previously unknown crushed piglet dead in the straw, brining her littler count to seven as well.
At the moment, there are eleven new piglets on the farm. Nine girls and two boys. We hope everyone makes it through the nasty winter weather over the next few days. I’d like to say it is a relief that both our girls farrowed successfully but I actually think I am more stressed out now that there are tiny baby piglets to worry about!