More piglets expected

Doris, our third Berkshire gilt, has been brought in to the farrowing pen as she bagged up abruptly this afternoon and has begun panting - all signs of an impending birth.
Her earliest due date was today and, while she’s fairly large, had appeared to be at least a few days off farrowing when checked this morning and again just after lunch.

But by 5pm, her udders had dropped markedly to the point that they were visible between her rear legs (”bagging up” as it’s known).

The Other Half has been seriously unwell with a virus for the past week but with a pig to be moved and quickly, she was roused from her sickbed to help give the farrowing pen a final clean and then help me walk Doris in from the field.

In less than an hour, we managed to give the pen a final scrub and disinfection, laid bedding, set up our temporary races between the field and the byre, and walked Doris in.

We had to work fast as Wednesday is also shopping night and we were running low on some “staples” so there wasn’t the leeway to put the weekly shop off for a day or two. (Well, we could have as we keep a lot of food stored but it’s nice to have fruit juice, butter, cheese and milk.)

But back to Doris. She’s nowhere near as large as Delilah was, but Delilah did have have a 12-strong litter.

Doris is also our first gilt to be in pig to a pedigree boar, so her offspring will all be entered in the Berkshire herd book and, if any are good enough, we could end up with our first pedigree offspring.

But, there’s a lot that could wrong between now and then, so we’ll just have to wait and see how things develop.