Circle M Farm

Piggy Lou is anxiously presiding over a squirming pile of greedily nursing piglets tonight, after a very long day of delivering babies in her back garden shelter. She started sometime late morning, and didn’t stop until there were nine lined up along her amply endowed tummy of teats. The last showed up after 5 pm.

Look at that little runt in the middle! You think he’d be a weakling, but he’s actually very strong and pushy and I’ve not seen him removed from a nipple by anyone. We’ll probably have to name him Wilbur, but I’m tempted to call him Porky in the hope that he’ll grow.

Piggy Lou looks like she’s smiling, doesn’t she? I’d be happy to be finished, too, if I’d been delivering babies all day in 90 degree heat. I love the way they walk and sit just like a big pig at just a few hours old.

It’s pretty scary to watch her move around in there with the tiny piglets. She is just gigantic. And not the most graceful animal in the world, in spite of walking around on tippy-toes all the time. Two babies, number 8 and 11, didn’t make it. I’m not sure if she squished them or if they were stillborn, but I found them both behind her, under the safety rail, at different times in the day. Farrowing huts have these little ledges around the edge of the shed in order to give the piglets a way to get out from under their mom when she lays down. But nine (or eleven, as it would have been) is a lot to keep track of when you are a tired-out tank of a sow.

When the little ones get too hot, they just pull themselves out of the melee and stretch out on the cool plywood of the shed. Piggy Lou spent all night last night scraping the hay out of her shed. That confused me, as she was supposed to be building a nest in there, according to the books. It also kept me awake, since hoof on wood is loud! But our clever girl was getting ready for this hot day by making the shelter as cool as possible, I think. You can see the relief the babies get when they are spread out on the bare wood. I’m so proud of our pig!

Piggy Lou could not have picked a nicer time to deliver. We had a work day here at the farm scheduled, and she had the bulk of the babies born while we were all up in the garden next to her weeding. We probably didn’t get as much work done as we might have, but it sure was a joy and privilege to participate in her first farrowing. She had a quite appreciative audience and being the people-pig that she is, I think she likely felt encouraged by the support.