My first experience with livestock savagery. A sow had 13 piglets. Four died almost immediately, torrential rain and the seemingly inevitable step or roll crushing death. We saved two with bottle feeding and the nine seemed fine. The mother has now decided to kill and eat her piglets. I have read about the reasons this can happen, unfortunately weather doesn’t permit more room for escape, and aside from bottle feeding the remaining five every two hours around the clock, something I don’t have the time to do, I see few options here but to cull the sow. Anyone else have experiences with this in swine? It’s upsetting and unsettling. #homesteading #livestock #swine #pigs
Discussion
That is brutal. You have a guess at the reason?
It’s a small farrowing pen with a shelter. She’s accustomed to free range foraging. I’ve read it can be boredom or even resentment. Pigs are smarter and more complex than most people think. If I release them, the five day old piglets will certainly die from exposure. If I don’t, she will likely kill and eat the rest of them. She’s in a food surplus situation so I doubt it’s hunger motivated. This is new to me, and I’ve been raising pigs on and off for fifty years.
We used to have a 40 gallon drum submerged in the earth outside of the barn with the lid on it for disposing of piglets that suffered this fate. The seething mass of maggots in there made them disappear quite quickly. It wasn’t economically viable to grind them up and use the protein for another purpose. It’s sad but it does happen. Even with specially devised pens that gave the piglets some safe margins away from the roll radius of the sow, they often seemed to not know that their young were even under them.
We haven't yet seen this but have been warned that it might happen with our rabbits if they feel threatened when kindling. So I have nothing to offer but my sympathy.
I'm sorry - that must be pretty upsetting.
Wow thats is terrible. I have no experience with pigs, but i know it must be very traumatic for you. Sorry man.
Losses are unfortunate but expected, this is admittedly disturbingly macabre. Hopefully we’ll make the right changes and not see any more of this. Thank you. 🫂
nostr:npub19sjwrt6hr76velk28xqkf8qmp8rftnvrky5hp84nksw84559fzvsq7ccqn tagging you here for homesteading and pigs, though none of yours have eaten their young.
We usually loose a few because they wander from the pack and freeze/starve. Also losses to crushing, but our mama's have not eaten their young.
Definitely cull the sow. Wait for her mammary glands to subside (a couple weeks)
I would be interested to know what you research is telling you on why she is eating the m.
Not knowing how you keep them, my guess would be she doesn't have enough nutrition. But that is just a guess.
Also, first litter? For our sows' first litter we isolated/gave them a separate space so their instincts could kick in.
We are pretty hands off with the piglets and if they survive the first week you are in good shape.
There is a reason they have so many babies.
I agree. I ferment the food for the feeders, boars, and the sows. I know malnutrition can result from the fermentation process, so I’m thinking lactating sows need to go on non fermented feed. Fermentation is a new process for me so blaming the new behavior on that makes some sense. I have two sows due in the next two months. Hopefully no more cannibalism. The remaining five piglets are ok so far, though she is far from a doting mother. She doesn’t lay down to accommodate them, just stands at the shelter door. I think she is agitated by the isolation, but days old piglets in a herd never ends well, particularly with the wet cold weather we’re having lately. The researched reasons are diverse, this is her third litter. I’ve had to cull before because older sows seem to just get done reproducing and abandon the litter, but most times three times is ok, four not so much.
Interesting. We soak our feed 24hrs, but don't ferment. And I'm sure you increase her feed as she gets close to farrowing. Bummer about the loss. Our Large Black is on her third farrow. This time we let her farrow in the woods with the boar in the same paddock. It worked well. Six survivors out of 9 born.
Good luck with the other girls.
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Thank you for the well wishes. Sometimes I wish there was a humane way to suspend mom from the ceiling for the first week. Eat, lactate, poop, nurse, but don’t move! 😊