More piglets on the way, maybe…
21 06 2007The Other Half took a turn at feeding the animals tonight - she had the choice of oven cleaning or pig feeding - and raced inside to tell me that Dolores was looking a little different to usual.
I have to point out that Dolores, one of our Berkshires sows, often looks different from one day to the next as she tries to keep us guessing whether she’s in pig or not.
Some days it looks as if she’s carrying a reasonable sized litter, some days she just looks fat and some days she looks like a very slim gilt.
But the Other Half was convinced something more was going on so I went out for a look.
The first thing I noticed was that Dolores has bagged up (udders dropped) to some extent, but not to the same degree as our other sows did when they were about to farrow.
The second thing was that she was having one of her “thin” days and was looking decidedly non-pregnant in terms of her lines, bags aside.
The final point was that Dolores had a discharge (the pig equivalent of a woman’s water breaking), but she wasn’t panting.
We decided to move her into the farrowing arc where she could be on her own so we had to delay our dinner while we led her out of the field and into the farrowing pen.
She was quite pleased to have an entire arc to herself with a huge nest of straw, but was even more pleased to find a large pool of muddy water, so she removed the straw from the hut, laid it in the mud, and then gave herself a “beauty” treatment - an enthusiastic roll in the mud.
The Other Half made the mistake of standing too close to Dolores when she’d finished, first getting a good spray of mud when the pig had a good shake and then being used as a rubbing post.
With Dolores settled in, we finally came in for dinner - not knowing whether to expect piglets or not. It’s typical of Dolores as she always likes to keep us guessing!
I stayed out mowing grass with the scythe until gone 10pm yesterday, but Dolores showed no sign of farrowing so I left her to it.
I was back out again early this morning and she was just the same as usual - demanding food and back rubs but with no further progress. Her bags have not developed any further, the discharge has stopped and she’s not panting.
She’ll probably wait until I’m away from the croft before anything further happens…
C’mon Dolores, I want to see more piglet pics.
Hope everything goes well and you get lots of little piggies.
You can do it Dolores ….. let us have some more little piggies.
Signed an Aussie “Pig”
For those who do not know what this “Pig” is about I guess Stoney might let you know some day
It looks like it was a pseudopregnancy. Dolores developed as expected over the 113-day gestation period, appeared as if she was about to farrow, but after three days her milk dried up and her belly shrank dramatically. She now looks her normal, non-pregnant self.
I know how hard you work on your croft so it made the copy of a letter I read this morning even funnier! I’ve posted it at
http://gowen.org
I hope you visit and have a tongue in cheek laugh (if you have the time??)