4 - 2 = 1.5

Well, apparently that is swine arithmetic according to Rosie. After two exhausting nights with her AND her nesting instinct, we are left with many, many less piglets than we hoped for. To begin with, this was her first litter and she was only carrying 4 piglets. That alone is enough to make for a disappointing farrow. To add to this, she was a slave to her ferocious nesting instincts. During her delivery, she was very concerned about keeping her babies under the hay. Constantly, she would scratch hay on top of them. She would stand up and nose around to see what was happening. Just very uneasy. After the first two piglets were born, there was an hour or more delay until the next two came. She spent this time standing and scratching hay on top of them. So the last two piglets were stillborn. They were completely developed, not mummified or dehydrated. There was no heartbeat, but I still tried to stimulate breathing. All to no avail. We are pretty certain they died in the birth canal due to her inability to sit down and deliver them. Perhaps the umbilical cord had already detached (as most do) and they simply could not take a breath.

So we are left with one male and one female piglet. However, the little girl is most certainly a runt. I have often wondered what causes the runt to be the runt. We have had some small piglets from the other litter that were just fine. They came right along, nursed well and grew at a normal rate. This one, however, was a weakling from the start. She was very whiny immediately after farrowing and it took almost 3 hours for her to latch on for her first feeding of colostrum. Her big brother takes his choice of nipples, often switching back and forth from one to the other during nursing and then he moves over to the nipple that the little sister is on and pushes her off. She is still tiny and wobbly and very sleepy. She just doesn't have the oomph that the others have had. The big brother, firstborn, is now twice the size of her. So we say that we actually have 1.5 pigs. Hopefully, as we introduce solid feeds, she will progress more quickly.

This disappointing experience has left us thankful for the day job! I can't imagine depending solely on livestock as our livelihood. Crop failure would be very difficult to overcome if it were all we had. We had eight people waiting to purchase their breeding stock, but fortunately we do not take deposits until the pigs are on the ground. Now we can be careful to never count our pigs before they hatch!