05-11-2016, 09:34 PM
Well the babies are still coming!! Some of the sows must have just "caught" immediately before they were removed.
The tiny size of some of the mums is shocking.
Baby piggies are delightful but there is a Bad, bad side to it. Taking the entire number of rescue piggies into account (i.e. not just those in Glynneath) of the births, only about 75% of the babies are being born alive. Most litters have been small ( 1 or 2 babies) and those babies are usually surviving, but litters bigger than that are not so lucky. One mum at Glynneath had 3 babies but only one was born alive. Maternal deaths on average with healthy well looked after piggies is about 20% and they are seeing rates higher than this with this lot.
One of the tiny mums was very unlucky. She was carrying 3 or 4 babies and they all died before birth. They were too well developed to be reabsorbed and the strain on the sows body was too much and she died too, despite the best efforts to save her.
So far there have been 70 births over the entire number rescued but there are still many more to come.
There seem to be more sows than boars being born and I wonder if this is a survival mechanism that kicks in in this sort of situation. If there are more sows, more babies can be born and maybe more will survive. But who knows.
There have been a lot of skin issues with them too. The babies that were born before they were removed have almost all had ringworm, whereas the adults have nearly all had mites, with hardly any crossover. I have never seen this delineation before. usually if one has mites they all do and the same for ringworm.
We did a rough calculation about our own herd and were horrified at the potential!! The young group have been with us since before Christmas and if Cecil were not neutered and each of the girls had litters of 3 and all were female we could have had more than 50 piggies by now!!
And that's not counting our old lady Ruby!!
It can so easily get out of hand.
The tiny size of some of the mums is shocking.
Baby piggies are delightful but there is a Bad, bad side to it. Taking the entire number of rescue piggies into account (i.e. not just those in Glynneath) of the births, only about 75% of the babies are being born alive. Most litters have been small ( 1 or 2 babies) and those babies are usually surviving, but litters bigger than that are not so lucky. One mum at Glynneath had 3 babies but only one was born alive. Maternal deaths on average with healthy well looked after piggies is about 20% and they are seeing rates higher than this with this lot.
One of the tiny mums was very unlucky. She was carrying 3 or 4 babies and they all died before birth. They were too well developed to be reabsorbed and the strain on the sows body was too much and she died too, despite the best efforts to save her.
So far there have been 70 births over the entire number rescued but there are still many more to come.
There seem to be more sows than boars being born and I wonder if this is a survival mechanism that kicks in in this sort of situation. If there are more sows, more babies can be born and maybe more will survive. But who knows.
There have been a lot of skin issues with them too. The babies that were born before they were removed have almost all had ringworm, whereas the adults have nearly all had mites, with hardly any crossover. I have never seen this delineation before. usually if one has mites they all do and the same for ringworm.
We did a rough calculation about our own herd and were horrified at the potential!! The young group have been with us since before Christmas and if Cecil were not neutered and each of the girls had litters of 3 and all were female we could have had more than 50 piggies by now!!
And that's not counting our old lady Ruby!!
It can so easily get out of hand.
Greeting from Wales.
Hwyl Fawr o'r Cymru.
This is the web site of the rescue I volunteer at.
http://guinearescue.blogspot.co.uk/
Hwyl Fawr o'r Cymru.
This is the web site of the rescue I volunteer at.
http://guinearescue.blogspot.co.uk/
