Piglets return to the paddock.

Observation and experience are great learning tools when raising pigs and I have learnt a lot over the past week. Luckily our inexperience  didn’t cause any problems and we now have twenty-one fat noisy piglets back out in the paddock with their mothers.

Fat and healthy.

We kept the sows and their litters in separate stables for the first three days and then let them return to their paddock to raise their young in peace. They’re all in robust health, having great fun exploring, tiny snouts rooting up the wet ground and meeting the other pigs. Fencing is meaningless, they are small enough to dart through at will but they always seem careful not to stray to far from mum. The other pigs in the adjacent paddock have shown no aggression at all towards the piglets, they all tend to freeze when the piglets get close and don’t move again until the piglets have cleared the area.

Getting into mischief is so tiring.

 I have learnt that either sow will feed any piglet. The first sow to lie down to feed will end up with twenty-one piglets squabbling noisily over the available teats. They are all fat and healthy so none are missing out.  The piglets all managed to double their birth weight in four days and the older litter have gained better than two kilograms in their first week. The two mothers are both eating their way through about nine kilograms of lactating sow feed a day and turning it into milk. Makes a change from two weeks ago when they were increased to one kilogram each a day. 

Too many piglets - not enough teats.

Before our next sows are due I will make some changes to our stables. The individual stables all need access to their own outdoor pen so that the sow and her piglets can roam and forage in a secure environment. At the moment the two maternity stables both open out onto a common area. This time it didn’t cause any problems as the piglets were only a day apart and formed a homogenous group with both sows sharing the feeding. I suspect that if the piglet litters were even two days apart the older piglets would quickly monopolise the available teats and the younger piglets would suffer.

We have one more Wessex Saddleback to farrow quickly followed by the three Tamworth sows. Won't be long and we will have lots more piglets on the ground.