My camera is still dead
But a friend took some fabulous photo's today, so as soon as she emails them to me I'll post them for you to see
Poppy farrowed 6 in fairly quick succession last night, delivered one afterbirth and promptly fell asleep
Bruce was convinced she was done, I wasn't
This morning there was still no sign of any more piglets so I gave her a quick shot of oxytocin and after about 30 minutes I could see she was struggling so on went the gloves and in I went. I'm not surprised she was struggling
I eventually managed to birth the offending piglet, preparing myself (and the vet student who's with us this week) for the fact that it would most likely be dead
But it wasn't
She is the biggest, fastest and prettiest piglet I've ever seen - though this is obviously a completely biased opinion
She's the biggest by far, we've had the second afterbirth and all seems well now.
I am a little dissapointed she's only had 7, especially after her first litter (by a Kunekune boar) was 10, but we did move her home from the boar about 4 afterwards this time, whereas last time she was here the whole time, so I'm not sure if this is the cause or something else - no sign of any obvious reason. But I'd rather she had 7 healthy piglets who are all fit & strong than more and lose some of them - stupid, girly sentimentality I suppose
Polished Arrow, Bruce worked in a commercial pig unit for a while when he was younger - it's him who actually does the cutting
I visited Lillian who showed me how she does her castrations, watched a few videos online and spoke to our vet before agreeing to let him do it though
I hold them and he does the actual proceedure - it's not nice doing it, but it stresses them more getting picked up than anything else
I'm sure your vet would be happy to show you, it was a vet in the pig unit who taught Bruce, you might even be able to take the piglets to them (in a big dog cage lined with straw) to keep call out fee's to a minimum (I like to save money where possible
) or there may be someone here on TAS who would come and show you ? A sharp scalpel and plenty of purple spray
We'll be doing these ones on Sunday, so I'll try and find a way to film it (maybe on Bruce's Blackberry
) and either post it here (if that's not too insensitive) or somewhere else to let you see - but seeing it in the flesh and having someone talk you through your first one would be preferable.
Topic: Oxford Sandy & Black piglets arriving (Read 9455 times)
