Circle M Farm

We’ve got a house pig. I found little Hero this afternoon limping around between his mama’s protective legs. Piggy Lou was keeping a close eye on him because something was odd with his left front hoof and he wouldn’t put pressure on the leg. I internally debated whether or not to intervene and suddenly things went very wrong…

One of the most difficult things about raising domesticated animals, or dealing with any animals at all, really, is deciding whether or not to get involved when there is a problem. When a birth gets long, when a triplet seems to lag, when a chick is wandering around the pasture by itself. These issues are tricky because a decision to intervene can have lasting repercussions. A weak lamb brought into the house at birth may live through the night but never be a strong animal. Research shows that lambs fed milk replacer lead shorter, sicker lives. What’s not clear is whether it’s the powdered milk itself or the very act of removing a sheep from the herd and coddling it that reduces vigor. A chick taken from the group and sheltered in a cage until it’s bigger may be safe from predators, but never fit into the “pecking order” of the flock once it’s returned. So an intuitive shepherd or animal farmer of any kind thinks twice before stepping in to resolve something that might take care of itself.

Piggy Lou was keeping this little guy close.

Well, I thought twice today about the limping piglet, and decided to at least take a closer look. I had noticed small bloody scratches on some of the other pigs, so I was concerned that this one had been bit in the constant fight for one of Piggy Lou’s 14 teats. When I came into the shelter where she was sitting guarding the lame pig between her hooves, she jumped up to warn me away from him and she stepped on his back leg. He squealed a mighty scream and I feared the worse. Piggy Lou lumbered off to herd up the other babies and I scooped up the now twice-injured piglet. His back left leg was torn along the inside from top to bottom, exposing the muscle underneath.

I really should have known better! 500 pounds of protective mom.

Now I had no choice but to take him out of the pen. First, I named him Hero in the hopes that he’d pull through. After washing the three-inch gash with hydrogen peroxide and fixing a tight wrap around the leg, I returned him to his mother, and he gamely dragged himself back into the throng. What a trooper! But when I returned later in the day, Hero was snuggled into the space under the safety rails with the wrap off in the mud and the wound full of dirt. Inside the house he came.

A shocking thing about baby pigs is that even though they are tiny, in this case the size of weaned kittens, they are incredibly strong. Hero put up such a huge fight just being dunked in soapy water, I thought he’d rip the rest of the skin off his leg. I first enlisted Maggie, my 13-year-old, who gave up in a terrified snit. Then I drafted Shannon, my husband, to hold the squirming squealing piglet while I doused him with peroxide, then iodine and finally stitched him up with a scary curved suture needle. By the time we got to the sewing, he actually had settled down and perhaps was in shock. Maybe an angel was sitting on him. I don’t know. But he was still for the whole procedure.

A nipped-off front hoof and a Frankenstein back leg. What a Hero! Being a piglet is definitely not for the faint of heart.

Then I knotted him off and fed him some goat milk from a bottle, which he thankfully gulped down with ease. I shook a powdered antibiotic into the Frankenstein stitching, wrapped him in a towel, and gave him back to Maggie to snuggle. What Hero needed most at that point was warmth and contact. Newborn piglets are supposed to be kept at 90 degrees, easy outside in the sun among a pile of other pigs. But during the cool night he’d need to be held or be bedded on a heating pad.

The final problem was to cover the long, awkward wound in such a way that Hero could move, but also be protected from the dusty dirt in the pigpen. I resolved to keep him inside overnight to allow a scab to form. He’s on bottles of goat milk fortified with garlic tincture and aloe vera gel, immune boosters that I hope will work as well as systemic antibiotics to fight the infection sure to start in the cut. Systemic antibiotics could save him from infection, but will upset his young digestive system, creating more pain and more diarrhea than a tiny pig could likely take in such heat. Another decision to think twice about.

Pig in a blanket.

In the meantime, Hero acts as if nothing is wrong. He roots so forcefully with his snout that I’m afraid he’ll rip a chunk of flesh out of my neck when I hold him. He balances on his two injured and two good legs, and moves unsteadily around. Tonight he’s asleep in a laundry basket, on top of a heating pad. Tomorrow we’ll decide whether he’s really a house pig (for a few weeks), or whether we can risk integrating him right back into the herd, limps and all. An intermediate sort of situation would be to bottle feed him in the house for a few days, then house him in the pen with the bottle goats and sheep for a while. Both scenarios beg the question of what happens when he returns to the rowdy group of biting, squealing, pushy siblings with their territorial mom.

The other piglets all look terrific and sturdy, already having come out of their shelter to explore the mud and grass in the pen. Piggy Lou was busy tonight building them a little nest of hay just outside the shed. They kept trying to line up in it while she worked, so she periodically tossed them out gently with her snout. Little Porky appears to be fully half the size of the biggest, but he trots around like the rest. Most are all white, like their mom, with a few black spots. All have non-cleft mulefeet, like their dad. Watching them is mesmerizing, but rather stressful, as it seems they must at any moment be trampled by their giant mama, between whose feet they persistently run back and forth.