A Harrowing Farrowing

Yesterday was a long and stressful day. At 4:30 Gertrude had still not had any piglets.

First time gilts can sometimes go a day or two longer than the 114 days gestation time, so we weren’t too worried, but we decided to move our school to the farm instead of staying at home, just to be closer.

All morning we did school and odd jobs. We picked the last picking of green beans, and the first major picking of tomatoes. We kept checking on Gertrude and she was unchanged. She would move to her outside nest, lie down and pant for a while. Then she would get up and drink some water, and wander around looking pitiful. She would come over for scratches, then go inside to her inside nest. More lying down, more panting, than back up for more water and back to the outside nest.

At about 11:30 the first piglet’s water broke.

3:00, no piglet. This was very concerning, because the amniotic fluid should be followed by a piglet within about 45 minutes, but we couldn’t do anything about it because we had to take Evie to violin.

When we got back she was in the outside nest, looking miserable. I had Evie make supper for the kids and texted Kathleen, and we decided to call the vet. Their on-call vet was on a call, so they wanted us to load her up and bring her in. She didn’t seem like she was going to get up and move around, and taking four kids in a pickup truck hauling a trailer 40 minutes to a vet office (when they hadn’t had supper yet) didn’t seem a great option. Also, $330 dollars just to look at her, with any interventions going up from there.

Kathleen got in touch with a 4H friend who got us in touch with a 4H friend who does pigs. She said it sounded like a piglet was stuck in the birth canal, and someone would have to reach in and turn it and pull it out.

So I gave it a try, and found a very tight, narrow canal, with two tiny trotters in it. I pushed when she relaxed, and pulled (as best I could) when she pushed. It still wasn’t coming so I ran to get some bale twine to help keep hold of the trotters. But while I was at the barn getting the twine, she gave a final push and out of the corner of my eye I saw a black, wriggly, slimy thing pop out and land on the ground. 5:45 PM.

Gertrude seemed as surprised as anyone.

She immediately set about re-arranging her nest.

Then she nuzzled the piglet a little bit and looked up at me like, “What is happening right now?”

Then she went and got another drink of water and went back inside.

Evie came out to help keep an eye on the piglet until Mommy got there. Gertrude laid down and pushed, then get up and nuzzled the piglet some more.

Several times she laid down with her butt too close to the wall so the piglets would not have room to come out and I had to shove her out of the way (she was grumpy about that). Still no progress on the second piglet. I tried another pelvic exam, and found the canal much more open than before. I also discovered, incidentally, that my hand is too big to pass the pig’s pelvic bones, so I was not able to feel the piglet’s body further back in the canal. This went on about 40 minutes, until Kathleen suggested putting the first one on to nurse and stimulate some oxytocin. I hadn’t done this because I was worried about the little fellow getting squished, but we tried it and it seemed to get her uterus jump started again.

About 5 minutes later we had a second piglet.

They came a lot quicker after that, with another long delay for number 6 (butt first) and number 8.

At this point she got up and turned around end for end to lie down on her other side. She seemed very attentive to her piglets, carefully moving her feet and picking them up if they squealed, and looking around before she flopped down again. As best she could, anyway, pigs don’t have much in the way of eyesight, and Gertrude has less than most because of her ears and eye wrinkles. She did her best, though.

9 piglets by 8:30. Kathleen took the kids home because they needed to go to bed and she had a batch of green beans to can.

Then afterbirth delivered by 9:30, and all piglets nursing happily. Gertrude was snoring.

But this morning when I went to check on them a little before 5 AM…

Turns out one piglet was hiding in there somewhere. How it survived being born after the placenta I don’t know. I am pretty sure I counted very carefully at 9:30 PM, and there were only nine, but I counted several times carefully this morning and there are now ten.

And there you have it. For a first time Mom, that was a great first litter.