The long pig farrows

The long pig is a china/hampshire cross. She's named the long pig because she is really much longer than the other pigs. I thought it would be interesting to throw some longer pig into my herd, so kept her and bred her instead of selling her earlier.

I got her from a fellow who thought that he wanted to pig farm, but then realized about 4 months into it that you actually need to care and feed for the animals every single day. Surprise!
I'll buy individual animals if I think that they're nice looking, or entire litters from other farmers from time to time. I do that to have the opportunity to grow them out and look at them to see if there's something interesting I'd like to add in terms of genetics to my herd. The jury is out as to whether the long pig will work out on pasture as a mother though. Hope she does.

The color variation is pretty fun. You can see the faint outline of the characteristic hampshire stripe on the long pig -- the white on the front shoulder with the black rear. But the piglets are wildly spotted and dappled. Click on the picture for a bigger version.

While I'm taking these pictures the long pig is giving a serious of low contented grunts as she nurses her piglets. GRUNT! GRUNT! GRUNT!

Pinky's piglets

Pinky has been doing a very good job with her first litter. I'm hopeful we'll wean all of them, but time will tell. Right now the piglets are spending quite a bit of time messing with each other, burrowing in the hay, and sleeping.

Pinky is a solid pink pig like the one on the left, the boar is a seriously spotted pig. Makes for interesting combinations.

The piglet facing us is colored like his/her dad, but is mostly pink.

Red n blacks piglets are a completely different color scheme. Same dad.

Here's dad, patrolling the perimeter fence for tasty grass.

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.