Homesteading Forum banner
21 - 29 of 29 Posts
Yes, as Redhog said.. you definitely want to give them a place where they can go away from the mom. We had a litter in July and we set up a heat lamp in the stall and put a board, oh about 6-8" off the ground and ran that across the back of the stall. They would go under the board and snuggle w/each other and the lamp. It kept momma from squishing them.. We had 7 piglets and didn't lose a one.

Jenn
 
Discussion starter · #23 ·
Thanks for your replies. The baby died late yesterday. :(

Redhog's suggestion worked, I got a lamp with a 60 watt light bulb and put it in one corner (safely) and put the remaining 4 piglets under it. One kept going back to mama though.

I wasn't prepared for such COLD weather, this is Arizona, and it should be much warmer even at night. We just had 2 nights in a row of record breaking cold....the closest reporting station to us was !!! 10 degrees !!! below the previous record low for this time of year! Sometimes the only luck you have is bad luck...

We are off grid, so don't even own a heat lamp, yikes the watts!!

Looks like we have 2m and 2f left, 3 are getting bigger, I think the 4th is "sucking hind tit" and falling behind, is it possible to "retrain" it now?

On another note, I now know why the new pbp sow was free, she is one mean motha, haha. Not averse to trying to bite every chance she gets.
Her two babies are growing fast, they looked really stunted for 10 week olds. In fact at 10 weeks they were half the size of my first pbp babies at 6 weeks!
Maybe we will just fatten up the sow and have a BBQ. Hope it was from her circumstances, not genetics...we'll see how the babies turn out.

My first two are sweet but shy. New mom is being very good about us crawling in the shelter and handling her babies! However they are brother and sister, so we wanted another unrelated pbp for some outcrossings....

I really like having the pbps, I think I would not enjoy the BIG pigs so much since I don't have experience handling hogs.
 
People need to realize that it is perfectly normal for the "milk" to arrive later after birth. More often the milk is there and everything is perfect...but a lot of the time it will take a day or day and a half. I didn't see in your post how you determined that there was no milk. Sometimes it is just the colostrum which is thick and slow to come. Then the milk comes later. We have had mares, sows, cows and cats that have all caused us concern with a lack of milk over the years and we finally realized that it is pretty normal. I think a lot of "bottle" babies of many species are the result of over-anxious owners not having enough patience. Just an observation.
 
Discussion starter · #25 ·
John, the piglets were sucking and sucking and getting nothing, they were getting too tired to even try after 12 hours, and by 14-15 hours they were looking VERY dehydrated, bony, and weak.

Probably didn't help that they arrived 5 days early, and in a cold snap. We had record lows - 10 degrees below last record low for here this time of year! I know it was cold, guessed mid 50's, but by morning there was ice on the water, and we were not ready for that. This is AZ, should have been way warmer. My bad.
 
I have heard about PB breeders purposely starving the pigs to make them smaller. I wonder if that's what happened to those pigs. It's criminal. My hunch is that with your kind care she will eventually become much nicer, like Tango's sow has done.
 
glad to see that you have 4 left. It sounds like you have it under control. I hated the stress of our problem litter. It drove me nuts. When we finally pulled them and started feeding them it helped the "she has no milk - she really didn't, she is going to lay on them - she did one of them but it may have been dead before it was squashed" stress.

Keep up the good work with them. Everyone offered some wonderful advice. Isn't this forum wonderful.
Laurie
 
Discussion starter · #28 ·
Wanted to let you all know the remaining 4 piggies seem to be doing just fine now! They even ventured out of the shelter for a walkabout in the pen today while it was warmer out.

Thanks for all the replies!
 
That is wonderful, I logged in early this morning to check up on them. It is so heart wrenching to watch the babies die off like that. I actually hate the birthing process for the pigs because of that. Glad they are doing well. Keep up the good work!
 
21 - 29 of 29 Posts
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top