Nursing Piglet-Farm Photo of the Week

On Thursday, 2 new litters of pigs were born, adding 15 more cute little piglets.  

BE (Big Ears) and John Zen, I have nothing to do with the naming of pigs on the farm; both farrowed within 24 hours of each other.  BE, and John Zen are sitters out of one of our first breeding sows, Allspice.  We thought that John Zen had bred a cycle earlier and had started to watch her for signs 3 weeks ago.  This is not the first time these two have farrowed so close together. 

This picture made me think about how much more like humans pigs are in nursing than other farm animals.  While goats, sheep, and cows are usually standing to nurse, both mama and babies.  With pigs, the sow and the piglets tend to lie down, which makes sleep nursing much easier for both as well.  As the piglets get older, they may grab a bite while mom is standing to eat herself, but most of the nursing happens like in this photo.  

Which also makes sense for the sow who could be feeding 5-18 piglets.  Piglets also cluster feed, meaning they may nurse every 10-15 minutes.  Each teat of the sowonly produces a couple teasppons of milk at a time, so the piglets need to nurse often.  That’s a LOT of mouths to feed a LOT of times a day, so I understand why the sow and piglets often doze while nursing.  I know I liked to nurse and nap, and I was never nursing 8 babies!

Piglets start SMALL, about 1.5-2 pounds, compared to their 350-600 pound mother.  Because piglets are SO small, eat so often, and need really nurtrient dense milk, they are very hard to foster.   We have tried with a few individual piglets and once an entire litter, and never been successful.  Anytime we’ve done it, it’s been many sleepless days and nights of trying to keep the same schedule and get the piglets enough to keep growing, and it’s always ended in heartache.  

So our number 1 selection criterion for breeding females is how well their mother was at nursing, and if the daughter takes after her mother, she stays, and if she does not, we don’t continue breeding her.   

We’d love to show you our new piglets and the other pigs, as well as chickens, ducks, geese, and bulls, so we started offering winter farm tours so you can come see everything here.  You can see the details on our website or email, call or text for more info.  Our CSA members get 1 free tour a year, learn more about our CSA on the website. 

We hope to see you on the farm soon!

Aila