A Dalek to the rescue

The New Little piglets are still alive.  They are drinking and wobbling about. They are not being given back to their mother. When Tahiti calmed down I went in and removed seven piglets bodies and parts of bodies.  I tell you this so you know why I have decided to try to raise the surviving seven myself. Poor Old Tahiti.  But I cannot breed from her again.  I cannot trust her.  I saw what she did.  Pigs are not intelligent they are not cognitive but they are highly instinctual.  And her instinct to trap and kill her piglets when she herself is frightened is not sustainable on my little farm.

Here is a nice story.

A local woman farmer read about my problem (FaceBook publishes my blog, so Social Media really is useful) and even before I called her to ask about sow replacer she had dug out her piglet feeder (it is very old – and has saved numerous broods of piglets for her), called our local feed store and asked if she had any milk replacer (the feed store owner is a  woman farmer too who operates a small feed store from her farm and we all buy from her) then when I called she had everything in place and all I had to do was drive over and pick it all up.  How is that for kind neighbours?.  Women Farmers Rock.

So I trained the seven piglets to drink from their gentle and quiet Dalek mother. They are very busy piglets so that was a bit of a riot – piglets bite too, the little savages). The Dalek has a heater that keeps the milk warm and is screwed down to a heavy base so now I can allow the piglets to drink whenever they want to. I just have to keep fresh milk in there and pop in every few hours to make sure they are all eating.   They are all set up in the turkey house with a heat lamp.

We are not out of the woods yet but we are way ahead of the last game. Whoever decides to live will still be alive in 24 hours.

Molly and her brood survived the experience without a problem.  All good in that department yesterday.

The thing with an incident like this is that it threatens to take over your whole day – defining every decision.  But the piglets will just have to slot in with the other farm jobs, I will do a few very late nights and very early mornings until I am satisfied that everyone is drinking well and I will deal with each of their crisis as they arise. But the milking still must be done, the big pigs fed, the mineral still has to go out to the cows and the broken window in the barn fixed, the chicks fed, the washing hung on the line and dinner made – not to mention all the straw in the house from last nights rescue mission needing sweeping. It is easy to neglect the rest and that would result in another catastrophe. I must stay aware!

It was hard for me not to sit with the piglets all day but there was plenty of other things to do and I got most of them done.  And it is important that they drink when they want to not when I want them to – this is much more natural and easier on the digestion.  As long as they all drink of course. I should put numbers on their backs to tell them apart.  There are two that are still not vigorous – I have my eye on them

I hope you have a lovely day. We have another long one but a good one.

Love celi