Archived News

14th October 2009

Sadly Prudence lost one of her strongest piglets through an accident on the day she farrowed, bringing her litter down to 13.  This was quite distressing at the time so I’ve been pleased to watch the other piglets gathering strength over the past five days and to have the distraction of checking on Phoebe. 

I expected both our 'girls' to have larger litters the second time around.  Prudence being a bit overweight, had a litter of seven in the spring but lost one, and Phoebe who was lighter, had nine the first time round.

Phoebe remains a smaller frame than her sister and Prudence is still too weighty but is feeding her offspring fabulously well! 

I was away from the farm yesterday on a Stage 2 Food Safety course and tomorrow I’ll attend Bacon and Gammon Curing (say that quietly as our pigs might hear!), so I was delighted that Phoebe should choose this afternoon to farrow! 

This is the last piglet to be born, it's coming out rear end first. See the tiny tail to the left and a foot emerging to the right.

The piglet just after birth- this umbilical cord is white.

Making its way round for milk.

Getting closer!

The last piglet stumbles round in search of a teat. Siblings are sleeping, having been fed for over an hour.

It's a bit of a bun fight as the piglets learn how to feed, with a lot of treading on each other and fighting over teats.  Some piglets still have umbilical cords trailing but these tend to detach and the sow (her description now that she's on her 2nd litter) will clean these up from the straw along with her afterbirth.

I managed to get word to Christopher at school that Phoebe was farrowing and at that stage, had seven piglets.  Things began to speed up and by 4pm there was a litter of 13 piglets.

Last time phoebe had pink, black and grey piglets; the colours emanating from their father Percy, Phoebe and paternal grandfather who was Grey Saddleback. This time there are no black piglets in Phoebe’s litter, but some have Tamworth colouring(maternal grandmother)  with a smattering of black spots and this seasons’ new colour-way, in both litters, is a faint background of pink with massive splodges of black!  They look so comical.

bonne nuit!