The red-and-black pig pregnancy

The red n black pig falling asleep on a pile of hay


I talked about possibly putting red n black in a farrowing crate to see if I got better piglet survival, but realized there was a step that I could try before a farrowing crate. What I did was construct a stall out of T posts and hog panels under the roof of my hay barn. It's not heated, but does give her protection from rain. I bedded the stall with hay, and built it around a half of a supersack of food. The pigs like playing with fabric, tarps being a particular favorite, so I figured that the supersack of food would provide her with some entertainment as well as allowing her to eat as much as possible.


When a sow farrows, each piglet is the size of a 12 oz can of coke, and weighs about the same. The more piglets the sow has, the less each piglet weighs. Sometimes when you get a litter, you'll get 5 big piglets, and 7 smaller ones. The bigger ones tend to survive better. I don't know why there's a variation in size -- different mating, maybe? The boar will mount a sow several times to impregnate her.


She's laying with her rear legs tucked in under her, and her front legs out in front. Sort of a how a dog will lay down. This is the position that they give birth in -- I'm figuring its close, but I've been thinking that for a week now.

After a sow gives birth, she delivers a large afterbirth, which she'll usually eat, so I don't have to deal with it. Just the birth alone will cause her to lose 50-75lbs of weight, both tissue and fluid. After that, as the piglets suckle on her, she'll lose another 100lbs. Talk about diet plans!

To reduce stress on her, and to give her some shelter from breezes, I've put plywood up outside the hog panels. If I put it inside she'll chew it up. I've left small openings on all four sides so she can look out if she chooses to, but she's not really interested in what's going on outside. Her friends have all come to visit. The white faced pig, and a little black and white pig from a previous litter come and look at her and grunt at her, and she grunts back. The boar has also been over a couple of times, and yesterday morning when I looked in on her, the boar was sleeping beside her, having pushed the hog panel in so that he was touching her through it.
You can flip a sow over with one finger, which is what I did to get this photo. All you have to do is gently rub her nipples. She'll groan and wiggle and eventually turn over to allow you to pet both rows of nipples. Notice where her feet are. If she were to walk her belly would be brushing the ground. At this very late stage in pregnancy you can see the piglets moving around inside her belly.
Here you can see the cleavage between the two rows of teats. They're not producing milk today, which is a pretty reliable indicator of less than 24 hours left to go, but I can't imagine her getting any bigger. She's HUGE.
Here's big mamma, who's' the next sow that's going to give birth. She's a bigger pig in all respects, so even though she's pretty pregnant she's still got good ground clearance. Big mamma is about a foot longer and 6" taller than red n black. Both are adults.


She's "bagged out", which means her breasts are engorged and getting ready to produce milk, but she's still a week or more out before she gives birth.

My dog, the medical experiment

Monster, my oldest airedale, probably got grabbed by a pig and had his right rear leg dislocated at the hip. At first I thought he'd been hit by a car, but when the vet examined him and shaved the leg you could see the tooth marks pretty clearly. It looks like a pig came from behind and grabbed him by the leg and shook him until the femur came out of the hip.

Don't recommend this vet

He's been an active, physical dog the entire time I've owned him, and lives to run. I took him to a vet clinic that I"m not really pleased with, who charged me $900 to tell me his leg was dislocated, and to refer me to a second vet, who actually treated him for about the same price. My other run-in with Northgate was when they charged me $1500 to do a bunch of tests on my cat and finally conclude they couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. So I took him home. Total treatment was 2 bags of saline. I will not be returning to Northgate Veterinary Clinic and do not recommend them. You can find their website here. While they did call me with costs after I took him in, I could have used that in the first place, possibly on the day I dropped him off, or at least a discussion of it. The diagnostic costs were more than the entire intial course of treatment, which wasn't cheap itself. True, some of the work was re-used. Contrast that to what happened at the next vet...

Do Reccomend this vet surgeon

Dr. Aguila at Animal Surgical Clinic of Seattle has been great. The first day the basic introduction and examination was done, and a complete rundown of the possible treatment options and costs; all in the first 30 minutes after arrival. The initial treatment was to put the dog under and attempt to reseat the femur, and then wrap the limb so that it would restrict motion and possibly allow some healing. This is a 50-50 option, and in this case it didn't work.

I found Dr Aguilas estimates of the cost of surgery and his professional attitude to be helpful. I don't like spending any more money than i have to, but having an accurate estimate of the cost of treatment upfront was very helpful. I could then make a decision, part of which is related to cost. The followup care was good, and at this point my poor dog had his hip back in place and healed, but he'll be on restricted duty for another couple of months.

The final treatment was to cut the dogs hip open and re-insert the femur in the socket, and then put in wires and screws to hold it in. I'm hopeful he'll be back to normal function at the end of this. he's a working dog, and I want to give him the best chance at return to full duties as I can.

The current treatment regimen is antibiotics 2x a day, pain medicines 3x a day, and we're just ending a regimen of anti-inflammatory medicines. For the first two weeks following surgery he was confined to his kennel to limit movement, and is now slowly returning to a more normal schedule.

If you'd like to see my website but even better, click here

Tracking human migration via pigs

Pigs -- the perfect traveling companion

The island chains in the pacific ocean are pretty interesting when you think about pigs. They're found on every major island, and are relatively new additions to the islands in most cases. The islands are too far for the pigs to swim between (think about how far Hawaii is from anywhere else) and once a particular strain of pig gets established on an island there's not much movement from there.

So if we assume that pigs were transported, they're actually a really good marker for when an island is colonized, and better as a way to track the progress of a particular migration. By changes in the DNA of the pig, you can follow a migration path. So the current thinking is that most of the pacific island chains were populated by people who came from modern-day Taiwan.

Source article can be found here.

I am sooo pregnant

This is our boar. he's a handsome fellow, about 20 months old, and weighs around 500lbs. he's a berkshire boar. This is the animal that I am aware of when I'm working in their pasture. He'll sometimes see me on the other side of the pasture, and run all the way across. I'm pretty sure I can't outrun him. So while he's galloping at me I have to decide whether it's a backrub he's after, or if he's grumpy. So far he's been mostly itchy, but every now and then he'll come over and try to bite me. He's only half-interested in biting me -- he doesn't make any sort of followup, and I don't tolerate it, but it's a balancing act. I do not turn my back on this animal without having the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Today I chose to step over the magic electric fence to safety. Shorty, one of our sows, greets him.
Shorty looks small in this photo. The boar is 40" tall at the shoulder. Shorty is 350lbs by herself.

This is the subject of this blog. This is Big Momma, my most experienced sow. She's been a great mother and has consistently weaned a high percentage of her litters. She's feeling pretty pregnant right now. I'm guessing that she's due this week. She's laying down like a dog would -- with her hind legs tucked underneath her, and her front legs straight out. She weighs about 450lbs and is roughly 5' long.

Moving around to the side, I'd like to take a look at her nipples. I can usually do this by rubbing her tummy and nipples. I'm guessing it feels really good to be rubbed. You can flip over a 450lb sow with your finger.

That's another pigs ear in the forground. The pigs tend to follow me around when I'm making my rounds. Towards the end of my trip I'll have the whole herd following me. It must look pretty funny from the highway. People honk sometimes.

She doesn't really want to move, so I'm about to move on, when the boar comes up.

He manages to get her on her feet, mostly by threatening to mount her, and as a result I can take a look at her nipples.

Yes, she's starting to get "bagged up" -- Birth soon. I try milking her -- but no milk is flowing, so not today. Maybe tommorow or the day after. Sows enjoy being milked.