From Piglets to Weaners

This is the edited version of the post that was meant to go up last week instead of A Sad Day.

Obviously our nine little piglets have grown since we last posted about them. Unfortunately as we were away, we don’t have any progress photos of them over those two months.

Here they are now at 17 weeks old:

The photo is a bit blurry because they wouldn’t stay still!

They were weaned off Miss Piggy at around 11 weeks old, which was probably a little too long as Miss Piggy had lost quite a bit of condition by the time we got back. We’ve obviously separated them now though and she’s starting to recover. There’s a tip for all of you women right there wanting to lose baby weight 😉

There’s always a runt of the litter and until last week ours had survived and seemed that she would turn out okay. She used to struggle occasionally, losing her balance and falling over, she was also smaller than the rest. She showed that she was made of strong stuff though. When feeding at the trough, all the piglets like to shove into each other to assert their authority (there is actually enough room for them to all eat side by side). She held her ground and shoved right back just as hard as all the others! Our hearts still hurt when we think about her 😦

Unfortunately one of the other piglets isn’t so great…we’re not sure what happened, we think Miss Piggy may have bit her on the back in a moment of frustration but basically one of the piglets seems to have nerve damage and can’t balance properly. At first we thought she was paralysed as she was just lying there all the time and dragging herself around however when we place her on her feet and steady her with our hands around her middle the whole time, she can run as fast as all of the other piglets! We decided to separate her as we didn’t want the other piglets to bully or trample her and to see if she improved. At first she was in our backyard in a raised garden bed that we moved around daily (our backyard was a jungle from being away for almost two months so she was cleaning it up for us!) so she had fresh grass everyday. Solomon was very curious about her however he became very motherly of her making sure she was okay and crying when she was upset or frustrated. We’ve now moved her into a small garden paddock at Kel’s parents where a small flock of chickens live so she can move around a larger space and have some company as well. She can eat and drink okay and doesn’t seem to be in pain. She does get frustrated sometimes when her body won’t do what she wants it to do however most of the time she’s quite content so we could never justify putting her down.

Here’s a video of her running with us balancing her – you can see her legs have no problem!

And here’s a video of her having a good scratch.