rachels.haven's Journal

[rachels.haven]

I'm actually kind of half wondering if they are a little premie. I don't think big mom hog's piglets last year were this small or ugly. It may also explain the lack of milk.

 

[Larsen Poultry Ranch]

Coffee cup pigs? Kinda like a teacup poodle?

 

[Baymule]

That’s a POW!

Why does it have to be so darned hard to get babies to live? Even good momma hogs squish their babies. I had 2 ewes lamb, 1 today, 1 yesterday, both had twins. Each has one living lamb. Naturally the dead ones were the prettiest.

I hope your momma hog has a good litter and doesn’t squish any.

 

[SageHill]

Coffee cup pigs? Kinda like a teacup poodle?

Hey - a new breed - sell to the apartment peeps $$ !

 

[Ridgetop]

one got eaten (a little concerned about that, AGH people will tell you to cull all if that starts happening even if farrowing in groups)

Depends if the sow killed it to eat it or ate a dead piglet to clean the farrowing nest.

Do you have roll bars on the farrowing box/pen? These are bars about 6"-12" up from the floor (depending the size of the breed you have) and about 8"-10" out from the side walls. You can make and install some yourself. Use wooden closet rods and round screw on closet rod holders. Cut wooden rods to length for width and length of box. Measure distance out and up on wall, mount the holders on inside wall of farrowing box. It the farrowing pen does not have wood sides, you can use screw eyes or drill holes in rods to wire them directly to a wire sided pen. If you have a wire sided pen you can make sides around the bottom with 2x12s or 18-14" plywood cut to fit around the bottom of the pen. The wood will cut any drafts and also give you somewhere to attach the roll bars.

Roll bars allow piglets to squirm away from mom if she accidently rolls on them. No more squishing them in corners or against sides of farrowing pen.

If you don't have a farrowing pen and want to build something from scratch for your farrowing sows here is an online source.

Niche Pork: Farrowing Hut Designs (A-Frame and E-Hut) - Practical Farmers of Iowa

Many PFI members farrow on pasture in huts designed by fellow farmers. Two common styles of wooden huts are the A-Frame and E-Hut (the E stands for electronic, because the design was meant to be shared electronically). These ...

practicalfarmers.org

 

[farmerjan]

I used to farrow out about 12 sows twice a year... No farrowing pens.. just the huts of whatever they were made of. Started with one sow that was ugly as sin... she wasn't a very good one but was cheap.. kept her black and white belted gilt (other 6 were males) and sold sow when she didn't breed back on time... 7 pigs is barely enough to pay for their feed..so no profit there. My minimum was 8 pigs raised up.... Bred the gilt that we named Daffy since she sounded more like a little duck than a hog... and she had and raised 8 or 9 every time... Never laid on a pig, never hurt or bothered a pig. Did a bang up job and kept on raising them... she went off one time and I couldn't find her (she was allowed to run loose on the one farm I lived on) and finally she came to the pen and wanted to be fed but would not go in... so I kept a pan of feed outside for her and about another week went by and she finally let me follow her... she had pigs I could tell with the udder... and she had hollowed out at the base of an old roll of hay and 8 nice fat little piglets. At about 3-4 weeks old, she brought them to the pen where all the other hogs were, and rejoined the group. Have no idea why she went off to have this litter..
I kept gilts from her from several litters over the years... NEVER had but one that laid on her pigs... and she got mean towards me and she went as soon as those pigs were weaned...
All Daffy's daughters and grand daughters would have 10-14 pigs and if they were born alive, they raised them. I made money on them and that is when pigs were bringing $25-35 a piece for weaned 8-10 week feeders that weighed 30+ lbs... about $1.00 a lb.
I kept sows until they were just too big or stopped being good producers... one was over 600 lbs when she produced 2 litters in a row of only 6-7 pigs... and I knew her time was at an end...
Daffy got to die of old age... She probably weighed 500 lbs... and I buried her. I miss her....

 

[Ridgetop]

Good production sows are like good cows and ewes, worth their weight for farmers. Our first pig was the remaining 4-week-old gilt from a litter of 16 that the mother savaged and killed. The farmer (a commercial hog farmer) sold her to us for $20 thirty years ago. He and his wife were raising her on baby formula and pablum. They saw a couple of newbies coming and a good chance to unload the time waster on us. We raised her on goat milk and pablum. She was a lot of fun. DS3 always wanted to breed and raise hogs but not zoned for raising hogs. Project pigs were ok.

 

[rachels.haven]

I've thought about farrowing crates for the first week when most causalities occur. The reason I don't do roll bars on the pens is because the piglets tend to get squished in the shallow nest mom digs or just out in the pen, I assume when they snuggle up to a pig that's laying dodwn. And the pen is made out of cattle panels so the piglets can just go right through. I may have contributed to the piglet getting eaten by adding hay out there in the nest and the piglets crawled right in. My pigs eat hay. Who knows.

There's one piglet left and it's becoming evident there may be something wrong with it inside. His skin is peeling like mad and seems to be the wrong texture like he's dehydrated despite being fed whenever he'll take it. Peeing, pooping, eating, but looking dehydrated. He's wasting away with a chubby belly. He's also started abdominal breathing. These were out of my registered sow by my registered boar so I'm half wondering if their genetics are incompatible.

I'm probably dealing with poor mothering genetics. I know my big mom sow was culled from her program and I bought her pregnant so there's a good chance she has poor mothering genetics, as of course does her daughter. The registered stock did not seem very thrifty, vigorous, or fast growing and I don't really like them. If these litters fail I may just get out of pigs. They are stinky, drink pee and poo fresh off the press (why? I just fed you PLENTY) and don't seem to value their offspring very much.

I could probably find a sow like Farmer Jan's if I wanted to go real, big, legit hog, but I have little boys that have to do everything and endanger themselves and my heart's not in it. Plus, big pigs are made out of muscle. Little pigs are also made out of muscle, but these are docile to border line lethargic/placid.

 

[farmerjan]

Sorry about your pig problems. I like pigs even though they have an odor all their own. Have thought about getting a couple again... then don't know if it would work here without real good fences.... They sure do a bang up job of cleaning up a garden of junk/weeds etc... and adding plenty of fertilizer and getting it ready for a good tilling in the spring to smooth it out and plant.

 

[Ridgetop]

Pigs usually will pee and poo in one place in the pen so picking up the poop and adding kitty litter, sand, or shavings might help.

The skin thing is very concerning. If they were preemies, the skin might not have been able to withstand the drying out of the skin after being born. I would look up possible genetic problems. When you buy other people's culls, there is always a possibility of getting something that was culled for a reason. I don't sell culls private treaty since I guarantee health and breeding potential but do send culls to the auction. One reason why I don't buy animals at the public auction.

Having had hogs, I kind of like them, and they are the one large animal that kids are guaranteed to make money on at the Jr. Auction. Their feed to meat conversion ratio is fabulous, and yur carcass yield is the highest of any animal. Where other species give only 45-50% if you are lucky, hogs can dress out at 70%. No wonder that they were the favored meat animal of pioneers and early farmers who turned them loose to forage, then brought them in to slaughter, salt and smoke.