Selfsufficientish.com

Doris, one of our Berkshire sows, farrowed yesterday afternoon and early evening, delivering 15 piglets. Two were still born (foetal anoxia), one died a couple of hours later (it had been revived as it wasn't breathing on delivery but obviously wasn't meant to survive).

The farrowing was more difficult than usual, but if you're not squeamish I've put the details on the blog.

More pics of the piglets later.

Well! What a squiggly lot they look! 12 isn't bad though, is it? How many teats has she got?

ina wrote:Well! What a squiggly lot they look! 12 isn't bad though, is it? How many teats has she got?

16 teats. I'm just about to take some more photos.

glad Doris made a recovery after her ordeal



PS who's the rough looking geezer in the avatar?

We've just lost another piglet. I went and checked before heading off to buy some feed, all 12 were fine and suckling like mad.

I came back 20 minutes later, poked my head around the door and initially it looked exactly the same as before. But I noticed something looked odd and when I checked, found a second of the revived piglets was dead.

It was in between the others, still had milk around its mouth and was still very warm. From the position of the sow, I don't think it had been rolled on.

It very much looked like it died while suckling.

I suspect that, as with the other revived one that died, it had suffered too much damage from lack of oxygen and so it died.

Half Pint is still doing well, as is the largest of the four revived piglets. Fingers crossed.

that's a shame, you gave them a chance at least and had you not been there none of them would have had a chance including mum

They seem to have that with lambs in common: get born determined to die. Can't be helped.

yes, cannot be helped - you obviously did everything you could. still a very high success rate, well done!

they look luvverly stoney we're all getting in a bit of a state here waiting for gingers first litter well brambles first litter by ginger

Hi stonehead, I am new here but would like to say that you have a beautiful sow. 15 is a very large litter. Sorry to hear about the losses, I always find that part hard as well but I think you still have a good sized litter and maybe enough for her to bring on. Well done.

We keep Berkshires and Berkshire/Duroc crosses here in Australia - At the moment we have 3 purebred sows and 3 partbred gilts, a pure Duroc boar and a new little fellow (Berkshire cross) piglet for future. We recently had to put our very very old pure Berkshire boar down and havn't been able to find another pure boy unrelated to our sows yet. Will do when we can but until then we are using a very nice Duroc fellow and bringing on a partbred Berkshire piglet from a friends place for next year.

Like the look of your housing as well - looks nice and warm.