a case of abandonment

One of our sows, Ida, started having babies at eleven o'clock Thursday morning. I went out to check on her at twelve thirty, and she had three fat little pink babies. She got up, shook herself and followed me back to the pasture gate. I was planning on coming back when she got done. What I didn't know is that she WAS done.

I've never had a sow have only three babies before. I thought she was stuck. I made her lay back down, gave her oxytocin, massaged her belly, begged, pleaded, and cajoled. I even entered her and checked and could feel nothing. By dark-thirty Thursday, it became clear that she simply had no more babies in her.

Friday morning I went out there to feed her (and the two other mamas in the nursery pasture), and here she came with only two babies.

"Where's your other baby?" I asked her.

She stuck her head in the feed bucket I brought, and ignored me. I went back and checked her nest, thinking she had laid on one. Nope.

The other two sows came up to eat and I did a head count of THEIR babies. One had eleven and the other had eight. Yesterday one had had eleven and the other seven.

One baby had deserted Ida and adopted a new mommy.

Yesterday afternoon I went out to feed them for the second time and Ida had NO babies. The other two had ditched her as well, and went with their little sister over to the other sow. Now one has eleven and one has ten and Ida has none.

Ida was following me around grunting and barking like she thought I was responsible for the whole deal.

"Don't blame me if you can't keep up with your own dang kids." I told her.

I collected all three of her babies and carried them back to her nest, but Ida couldn't even be bothered to follow me back there and set things right, so the babies just jumped up and went right back across the pasture to their new mom. Squealing and yipping their way, single file, through clumps of wire grass, and ditches and weeds until they got back to the other sow's nest.

I know what caused this. I don't know how to explain it to Ida, but Ida is a good mom, it wasn't her parenting skills that did this. It was the fact that the air has turned coolish. It's simple math. Ten babies snuggled together generates more heat than three babies snuggled together, even when up next to the relative furnace that is Ida, so they ditched her for their own creature comfort and a bit more body heat.

Ida seems to be taking it pretty well, all things considered. This morning I was looking out the kitchen window and I noticed her lay down out in the middle of the pasture. Six or seven of the little runties made their way over to her and nursed, probably getting the best meal they've gotten all along, because there was no fighting and shoving for elbow room. Ida's getting her needs taken care of and the runties are getting their needs seen to, and everybody seems to be happy and thriving. I was going to try and go out there this morning and set things right again, pen those babies up with Ida where they couldn't abandon her again, but it seems like they've worked things out just fine on their own, and who am I to mess with it? [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

I never saw that happen with pigs because we never had more than one litter at a time, but when I first started reading your story, I thought at first maybe you had a serious problem because I can remember one litter we had when the sow had what folks called "milk fever" at the time, which really meant that she just didn't produce any milk and we lost that litter. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

And to get completely off topic, my daughters just left and today they've been going through boxes of my mother's old pictures and found this picture of me at the "fat stock show" with the first pig I ever raised. I didn't know any such picture even existed, although I've still got the blue ribbons and the showmanship ribbon we won. [img]/forums/images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]

I am a little concerned with one of the other sows. She is big as a house and her bag is as neat and trim as can be. She shows no sign of having any milk at all and based on her size, she's due any minute. I just hope she has them soon so I can farm her babies off on some of the other sows. I have bottle fed thirteen baby pigs at once and I am not prepared to do it again.

Right now I have three sows with babies on the ground and another laying out there getting underway.

That picture doesn't surprise me at all, sounds like something a mother would treasure. I would like to see it. Do you have a scanner?

Whew, good luck with that many baby pigs at once. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

And I did scan the picture; click on the "attachment" at the top of my last post. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

Awww.....! That's a pretty good sized hog. I bet that brings back a flood of memories.

Well I was out until one thirty this morning with that little gilt. It was her first litter. She ended up with five but it took her from six thirty to one thirty to have them all which averages to what...one an hour? I had to help her with the last two. She would get the back feet out and then stop and take a nap! She's doing fine, God love her. Brings the tally up to 26. So far. I still have three or four sows to go over the next few weeks. [img]/forums/images/icons/ooo.gif[/img]

Oh by the way, Ida kept me company the better part of the night. I'm not entirely sure, but I think she had thoughts of stealing some of those new babies. [img]/forums/images/icons/smirk.gif[/img]

Cindi, with that many pigs, you'll soon be competing with the big "factory farms". [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img] I'm curious as to just what you feed them. Fifty years ago, before the days of bakery "thrift stores", we bought the "day old" bread from the local bakery (stuff they had picked up from the grocery stores) for $.03 a loaf, and for awhile we were buying buttermilk in 55 gallon barrels from the local creamery. We also bought a "mash" of some kind that we mixed with water to make "slop", and then added a little corn to their diet (supposedly to firm them up and make leaner meat).

The pig in that picture just tipped the scales at an even 300 pounds.

We buy our feed from another pig farmer about sixty miles from us who has his own mill. We buy 3000 lbs about every three weeks. It's a ground corn base with, with wheat and barley and a supplement package mixed in. The hogs love it and they just thrive. It's only 16% protein, which is basically a maintenence feed, but we feed it to the goats and the chickens and in a pinch we mix some warm water or milk replacer with it and feed it to the dogs as well!

When the piglets start creep feeding we'll give them a pelleted 18-20% protein feed depending on what is the best price. Plus the pigs are on pasture so they graze as well. Even now, in the dead of winter they can still find roots out there that they want to eat, and we also give them pangola hay to help them through.

We used to feed thrift store bread and three day old cakes etc, but it got to be such a hassle. People were buying the same thing we were buying by the pickup load and trying to re-sell it at flea markets and such, so a lot of the thrift stores went up on their prices. [img]/forums/images/icons/mad.gif[/img]