Friday Night Glamour Shots
Polly was due a full 5 days ago and indeed, on Tuesday when Mama Pig farrowed, she looked imminent as well. Barely able to get up, swollen where you expect and a discharge that would have been worrying if, in fact, her due date hadn't actually been Monday. But Polly tends to eat until the moment she lies down to farrow and isn't much of a nest maker, so those usual barometers of imminent baby pigs aren't at all useful. So for the last 3 nights I have awoken to check her and nada.
After work today, Evie and I had a few errands to run and upon arriving home, we had groceries to bring in. But some little voice in my head told me I had better go check Polly before I did the groceries and so I did...and found 3 very new babies! Polly looked miserable in the warm weather today but everyone else was fine so I grabbed her fan, poured some cold water on her back and went to the house to bring our groceries in and feed my child.
Once a sow starts farrowing, I watch the clock and try to check every 20-30 minutes...if we have a longer delay between pigs than that, trouble is often a-brewing. And sure enough, Polly went nearly 45 minutes with nothing doing. This of course means lubing up and "going in".
Unlike horses, cows or sheep, most pigs seem to get stuck only a wrist-length in (I have been shoulder deep on the aforementioned species!). I checked that far in and felt nothing. I stood up and studied the situation. Polly was really starting to seem stressed and with no new pigs in nearly an hour, I decided I had better check again.
This time I went until I hit something...and at first I had no idea what it was. It was big and rounded but no other defining features...no nose, ears, legs. It just felt like a tennis ball. I fluttered my fingers around the roundness and accidentally hooked a leg---it was a BIG baby and it was breech (butt-first, rather than head-first).
My arm was fully extended inside Polly and I could just barely go further in to try to catch both back legs so I could pull. Polly also decided at that moment that she would pitch in and "help" with some serious 600-pound sow pushing. Anyone who has ever been arm-deep inside an animal attempting to hook a leg knows just how not helpful the mother's help is at this point.
By some miracle I grabbed both slimey legs and got the piglet pulled out of the spot it was stuck in. From there, Polly did the rest and out he came. But the long time in combined with the backwards presentation meant he had breathed in a ton of fluids. And so the pig-spinning began.
It was a technique I learned long ago with puppies and is based in actual science. The fluid in the lungs needs to come out as fast as possible and so you grab the hind legs firmly and spin 'til you win..literally you have to whirl the baby back in forth and let centrifugal force do the rest. It came streaming out of his mouth and included a big wad of sticky mucous, something that would have been hard to remove any other way.
Fluid removed and able to breath, he promptly started screaming his displeasure at my technique, which was my signal that my job was done. I sat him down with Mom and he was soon at the milk bar.
I headed back to the house covered a variety of fluids and detritus picked up from the stall but happy to spend my Friday helping new life into the world...and admittedly pretty happy I won't have to get up every two hours again tonight. TGIF everyone!
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