Motherly instincts

One of the new gilts we acquired last summer farrowed last night, producing a modest but healthy litter of seven piglets. Well done, too, to our young boar Alfie for his first litter.

Pigs being so large, and piglets being so small, means that generally there are few obstetric issues, certainly far less than with sheep. It makes sense, however, to keep a supervisory eye over proceedings but there is little need to intervene. This amounts to wiping any mucous and membrane from the mouth and nose of the new born piglet, snipping off most of their trailing umbilicus and giving the remainder a spray of iodine. Then point them in the direction of a teat.

It is fascinating to watch the behaviour of the sow, or in this case gilt as it was her first pregnancy. Its always slightly nerve racking looking on expecting a tiny piglet to get squashed. 

With first timers, from my observations, there is an initial seeming perplexity on the part of the pig when a piglet arrives and is scrambling around her legs. After a few more arrivals mum appears to realise they she has some responsibility for  these miniature pigs and begins to take ownership.

She soon lies on her side to allow them to suckle whilst delivering the rest of the litter, although she will stand up at intermittent intervals. This is often after a new piglet is delivered and the action of standing up breaks the umbilical chord. Then comes the process of lying down again with her growing brood milling around her feet.

One of the most remarkable things is how the new mother deploys a technique to avoid crushing her off-spring. First she makes a rapid low grunting call to signal to the litter. Then she leans against the farrowing house wall and slowly slides her back down, lowering herself to the ground. As she does so the piglets gradually retreat backwards out of the way of her great bulk. Mum then shuffles herself over a bit more so that her teats are exposed and the piglets scramble to latch on. 

Normally when you feed a pig they are entirely focused on consumption and focus completely on this task until all the food is gone; there is no interrupting them. This morning when she came for her food her litter was behind her and after every few mouthfuls she return to her litter to check on them before resuming her feeding.

New born piglets have only one aim: to search out for a teat a suck on it as if their life depends on it. In fact it does. If you move them aside, for example under a heat lamp, they are immediately determined to get back to mum to suckle. 

Its best not to handle the piglets too much at this stage in any case as they will let out a high pitch squeal which will immediately alarm mum and her protective instincts are triggered. Best let her get on with it if there are no problems.

All of this and much more comes naturally to the new mother. This is both amazing and, for me, exceedingly helpful.

The scramble. The eldest of these piglets
 its just a couple of hours.