On Wednesday night our sow Ophelia gave birth to a wonderful family of piglets. Her labor started late afternoon and the first piglet was born around 10:15pm. They kept coming until 5:15am. Some came out right after one another, but some were widely spaced (there was a 2 hour wait between piglet #6 and piglet #7). During that period she had 15 live piglets! Then around 11am on Thursday morning she had another live and healthy one! On Friday she gave birth to one final (stillborn) piglet. That big mamma grew 17 piglets inside of her. Pretty impressive, huh?
There are so many reasons why the piglets are wonderful. They are very playful, funny, sweet, the have cute curly tails and are so tiny compared with their mom! These creatures are so great to see next to their mom because of the incredible size difference! If you think about the size difference between a human baby and a human parent it is probably about 1:15 or 1:20. Between a calf and a cow it is between 1:10 and 1:15. These little piglets are likely only a couple pounds and she (although we haven’t weighed her) is probably in the range of 600 lbs. This is a 1:200 or 1:300 ratio! I think this is one of the reasons why they are so great to see, the comparison so different from anything we’re used to. Come by the farm to visit them, there is a great viewing spot!
