A SAD TALE

I won’t go into this story in detail. – it is too sad. But I rescued these two tiny hours old piglets from the abattoir yesterday.

Their mother was brought in for slaughter at full term. She was brought to the slaughter house yards after-hours and delivered two piglets in the night in an outside concrete pen.

The owner of the sow was called and he said he was not coming back for her and to proceed with her slaughter.

The babies had a number of hours with their mother but kept slipping under the gates and one was rescued by a worker as it wobbled into a pen of cows.

This one was particularly filthy with manure.

On a normal rescue newborns have a 50/50 chance of surviving being hand raised. These spent a cold wet night in a slaughter house yard, and are now horribly at risk of illness.

So here I have two wee piglets in the laundry next to the heater. Already they have diarrhea but surprisingly both have taken to the bottle and are drinking their goats milk really well.

They jump up when they hear me come in every two hours and twice were at the door yelling before I even got there. Which as you can imagine has Boo-Nanny rushing back and forth trying to hurry me up.

They fill up fast from their supermarket goats milk then snuggle back down to sleep. But the runny poo is very worrying. Expected though.

One is getting stronger I think and the other one definitely weaker.

I have medication for the diarrhea but they are so young they have not even had a chance to decide to live yet. We will see.

John told me I was ‘insane’ for taking them. ( I threw breakfast pumpkins to the animals yesterday then drove at speed, at 6 in the morning, the 45 mins to the locker to pick them up.) Then later he said, well at least they will die warm.

While I drove to collect them my mother in law drove in the opposite direction to buy the milk. I will buy more today after the vet. But everything must be paced in between the two hour feeds.

The abattoir staff were incredibly grateful for me taking them. They had tried to keep the piglets in with the sow. But the whole thing was a disaster. They were so relieved at the rescue and horrified to have these tiny wee life forces born in the slaughter house waiting room. But the owner of this sow is damned in my opinion. Damned straight to hell.

I am unapologetic in my fury. He knew she was vastly pregnant – it is pretty hard to miss that udder.

So in between two hourly feeds I brought in all the hay myself. All 86 heavy bales. Fury is best put to work. My arms ache from the weight of these bales and I have stacked them loosely so I can keep a watch for any heating up.

Also the tree men came yesterday so now the big dead tree outside my bedroom window is gone and I am not quite sure what to do with all this light.

My tired sad self does not feel like so much light.

Feeding went well in the night. But I fear John’s prediction may well come true.

I feed these babies again in one hour so I had better get busy with the other farm animals.

I am being very careful with hand washing too. And Boo is not to visit with the babies until they recover. I have no idea what bacteria these wee animals brought back after their birth into the slaughter house gutters. But they were covered in it. They are clean and dry now though and warm and well fed and burrow deep into my dressing gown after their feeds like normal little orphans.

Love celi

Weather fine and clear! Of course. It would be, now that all the hay is under cover and the orphans are inside. They had a wet night.

C