Apologies for not keeping everyone up to speed during Sauce and Scoffer’s pregnancy but there has been little to tell that is different to previous occasions… apart from them being very well furnished with pumpkin and my endeavours not to cave into the fervent pressure to feed them copious amounts of it; which would have resulted in them putting on far too much weight! As it is, they both kept fit and agile and each of them popped out a beautiful brood of babies in the last week.
First off was Scoffers or Mini-Mum as she has been dubbed. She really didn’t get the birthing message at all; there was no dashing about making a nest or preparing for her piglets, they just suddenly arrived. It came up on her all of a rush and she promptly went into the pig house and overnight popped out 8 adorable piglets of pale skin with a variety of spots and splodges in brown and black.
Her mother on the other hand, having realised that Scoffers had nicked prime spot to settle down with her little ones, spent a great deal of time, effort and energy dashing to and fro making herself an entire cocoon out of bits of twig and bush in which she planned to give birth. Sadly this was located in the pig paddock and I felt that it would be safer for all if she was in the pen, where she and her piglets would be behind a closed gate and protected from any unwanted night time marauders. Furthermore, although wonderfully designed and built, her cocoon allowed little space for the babies and certainly none for me to oversee production… and help out if required.
Sauce at the entrance to her own design and build birthing cocoon.
So, reluctantly she followed me into the single acre pig pen, looked at the tin hut and then scurried around building another nest, in what she clearly felt were rather less satisfactory circumstances. However, she was soon the happy mother of 13 piglets… an adorable selection of black and white and tricolour babies.
Within a week the new arrivals were galavanting around both the pig pen and paddock, a veritable swarm of little legs dashing hither and thither, hiding in the undergrowth, playing frantically with each other and falling exhausted into a heap at any given moment. Sadly three piglets didn't make it passed the first night but even so, a swarm of 18 piglets running en-masse, is just too adorable, lifting the spirits and bringing a smile to the lips of all who see them.