when can i take away the babies?

[spish]

my sow had a nest of 6 piglets 4 weeks ago, sadly one died at 2 days old but the other 5 are doing so well.
even though they are eating starter food for piglets, and all the scraps mum gets, they are still demanding a lot of milk off mum, and she's getting so thin im extremely worried. you can see her hip bones and her skin is just hanging off her we upped her food intake right after the birth (to twice as much as normal) then upped it again when the piglets were a week old and started nibbling at mums food.

she's getting around 5kg worth of feed a day (two buckets normal mini pig food, 1 bucket starter food for piglets, then table scraps from us, 4 sets of neighbours, and the cyclists/walkers that come by every day bring food too)....and thats a blooming lot for such a small pig!
shes been wormed so thats not the problem, i think its just the demand from the piglets. her last nest she only had 3 so it wasnt so hard on her until the pigs were 8 or 9 weeks old, then she started losing weight, but by that time piggies were old enough to go so she'd bounced back quickly...

so what id like to do is take piglets away to raise so mum can have a rest and regain weight. but of course i dont want to take them away to soon that they are not properely weaned and will die.

so at what age can i do this please? i waited until they were 10 weeks old last time but feel i waited way too long and they could have gone a lot sooner?

 

[jhm47]

If they're eating and drinking well, it would be fine to take them away. When I raised commercial pigs, we often weaned at 3 - 4 weeks if they were eating well.

 

[spish]

will they have any special needs if i take them now? (do they need to be kept inside, or outside with heat lamp, bottle feeds, wet pellets to make a mash or leave dry?) i concerned about dehydration, ive not seen them drink from the water bowls only from mum, but have seen them eating mums food/table scraps/chewing the wood fences etc.....

 

[jhm47]

Pigs are very smart, and they will quickly learn to drink water. As to your question about heat lamps, etc. I would say they should be fine with a good supply of dry bedding. They usually snuggle up to each other and burrow into the bedding.

 

[SatakaraCritters]

I don't like to take piglets away any earlier than 6wks. You could try and take two of the biggest piglets out and raise them by hand rather than risk the whole litter. Depending on temps I would keep them inside because your taking them away from mom who is a big heat source. I would feed them on bottles a few times a day especially if you don't know they are drinking on their own and them feed them wet food.
Just what I would do and most of my experience is with mini pigs not sure what your dealing with but I'm guessing also minis. Hope things go well.