Monday, April 08, 2013

Piglets!

Tilly has finally had her piglets! Mom and babies are doing fine, although it has been quite an emotional ride.

Tilly went into labour on Saturday around 16:00 and gave birth to her first piglet at around 20:00 (the sun was just going down) Martin and I were with her the whole time and we have to really hand it to Tilly. This was her first birthing experience and labour seem to go without a hitch.

However, Tilly was rather surprised when the first piglet came out. I don't think she knew what to expect! We broke the air sac to make sure our little darling could breathe, and then let her go find Tilly to suckle. Tilly however, was not on board with this idea and sadly, killed her first piglet. We were horrified. We had not expected this at all. Looking back we can kind of understand. She was probably in a lot of pain and distressed and then she had this little creature trying to latch on. We quickly removed the piglet from Tilly's ark and she laid back down to get on with birthing.

I got on the phone with a farmer friend who recommended we keep the rest of the litter away from Tilly until she finished giving birth. Tilly then preceded to give birth to 10 more piglets! (well done girl!) We put them all in crate with straw and let them huddle together to keep warm. I cannot tell you how cute they all were!

When we thought Tilly was done we put all the piglets inside with her and then went to bed. By this time is was about midnight and below freezing. Nature had taken its course and there wasn't much more we could do.

At first light Martin went to check on mum and babes and sadly discovered only two had survived. Tilly had also given birth to an additional piglet during the night (we should have waited for a second after birth) however it was much too late to save it. We were devastated.

This whole experience has been great and awful. I feel so guilty and although I think we did the best we could with the knowledge we had, I hate that so many piglets were lost. I just feel awful. However, Tilly and the two remaining piglets seem to be doing well. Despite her initial response to motherhood (perhaps not that uncommon!) Tilly seems to be a good mum. We spy on them all the time (mostly to make sure Tilly doesn't squash them, which is very common) and I love seeing their little family unit.

We would definitely go through this process again and will hopefully have better results next time. Meanwhile we plan to keep a very close eye on these little fellows!

The other piglet is camera shy.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Such a welcome sight!

Love,
Mom
x

7:25 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home