All 10 piglets nursing today!

I chekced this morning to find 10 little piglets quietly nursing off mom! We are very happy that they all have made it this far. Yesterday 4 seemed very weak and they are all VERY small, it seemed doubtful that they would all survive. Nevertheless we left the mom alone to take care of them, and prayed as a family for their health, and today they are ok.

Our philosophy is to leave everything to nature that we can, with as little intervention as possible. In this case it seemed to work. It is amazing tha thte mom could get those four piglets up and nursing when 2 of them could hardly walk, but somehow she managed.

The one "intervention" I attempted yesterday was an attempt to place the weakest of the litlte piglets on moms belly to get it nursing but in the process I made the one cardinal sin of a pig farmer, NEVER STEP OVER A CRANKY PIG.  Sure enough she jumped up, throwing me against the wall of the shelter, scratching my leg up and pull my hurt arm backward. That was 10 minutes of intenst pain that resulted in the mom leaving the pen anyway. The only good that came out of it was that we were able to wash the mud off her belly while she was up. This did allow hte piglets easier access to their precious food.

The bottom line here is, once again, in most cases nature has a better way of dealing with things than our attempts to improve on it. Its simply amazing to watch all the miracle of birth and observe the success of these animals when provided their natural habitat and left mostly alone.

Heres a couple shots of the piglets in their morning meal.