I connected with a farmer in western Canada who was having challenges with a new litter of piglets recently.
Essentially, due to some extremely cold weather and the unanticipated nature of their arrival (she wasn’t sure when the piglets were due!), things went sideways fast.
And by that I mean that the surviving piglets ended up being moved indoors to live in the farmer’s bathroom. And because they were separated from the sow, required bottle feeds with artificial colostrum, every few hours, for weeks on end!
It all sounded like an absolute nightmare to me, not just because we’ve recently renovated our bathroom and the last thing I’d like to imagine is a bunch of piglets living in there!
But also because every time we’ve tried to out-smart nature in ways similar to this in the past (remember the time we tried grafting a few piglets onto a different sow?), there’s a high probability of everyone losing miserably.
This is not to say we don’t have challenges of our own – we absolutely do and we share about those regularly! But it sure is comforting to have Greg’s meticulously kept records so we know, with pretty high accuracy, when pigs are due.
And also to have encountered enough of these cold weather farrowing situations to know exactly where the pitfalls lie and how to avoid them all together.
Just last week, for example, our sow Meatball was due and as luck would have it, her labor kicked into high gear on one of those chilly nights where the temperature dropped to single digits.
It was a prime setup for hypothermic piglets. And in years past, this would drive us to sit out there all night to dry the piglets off and help them find colostrum right away.
But these days, we honestly don’t need to do a thing except of course to watch her like a hawk (through the webcams!) for signs of labor. And then get the hoop house heated up with the propane heater so the piglets can literally hit the ground running!
The newest litter of piglets here are just over a week old now and are doing great! Interestingly, when we castrated yesterday, we realized that every last one of them is a male. And that’s definitely a first for us!
Your Farmers,
Jenney & Greg
PS – The roads should be clear (there’s no snow on the forecast for Sunday!) and we have an awesome selection of our organic and pasture raised meats available for you! Click HERE to place an order and we’ll look forward to seeing you soon!
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