Purdy’s piglets are due on Tuesday!
This was 10 days ago:
She’s much bigger now, and her teats are filling out with milk now, indicating that she is getting close.
The old farmer way of counting pig gestation is to say 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days, which is all well and good if every month were equal! But, they’re not and that inaccuracy can lead to un-attending farrowing. More precisely, pig gestation is 114 days. While pigs are able to farrow without help most of the time, the piglet mortality increases quite significantly. As we get close to farrowing time, we are checking on Purdy more frequently and have set up Eleanor’s extra video baby monitor in the barn so that we can check in without disturbing the pigs if they’re sleeping, and without having to schlep out there over and over.
Eleanor is a big fan of the pigs. She likes to pet their ears and feed them hay.
We look forward to seeing her reaction to the piglets. I’m sure there will be stories to share! And we will get to put our new experience to use when Ruby has her piglets in 3.5 weeks.
