Showing posts with label pig giving birth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pig giving birth. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

sow giving birth

The piglets come out a little wet, with their umbilical cord still attached. It tears pretty easily, so usually gets torn off by the piglet moving around after birth. Here a little piglet is about 10 seconds old.

They come out with their eyes closed and their ears flat against their heads. They rest a few seconds, open their eyes, and look around. It's an amazing thing that this little piglet is oriented and aware seconds after birth.
A little wiggling and the piglet starts to make its determined way around to the rows of teats. they're actually pretty agile at this point -- 2 minutes after birth.

Here the piglet finds its own personal nipple. As I've mentioned before -- this nipple will only be used by this piglet for the entire time it's nursing on the sow.

Another pig is born...
She's had 7 piglets so far, but we haven't seen the afterbirth yet, so there's probably a couple more to come. After she's all done we'll move her back into the hay barn where it's a little dryer and more sheltered and we've got some heat lamps set up for the piglets.