Mother Courage

It’s not often that you can use the word ‘awesome’ in its truest sense, but I believe we can of our breeding sow Beatrice Bella.

She came to us a modest sized gilt, lately weaned from her mum, but soon grew into a magnificent sow, and on Sunday produced her second litter of piglets for us.

Checking on her on Saturday night was rather like looking in on an elephant. She filled the hut completely with her bulk. Sensing our presence, she moved her head slightly towards us and gave a small grunt of greeting.

Throughout the following day she showed no signs of going into labour. At mid-afternoon I took a wheelbarrow full of rosemary and lavender offcuts over there. Bella was sitting in her old wallow, the one that’s turned black and fetid, the one we’ve flung a load of straw into to try and soak it up. She was plumb in the middle of it covered in rank, black mud, looking pretty pleased with herself.

Staying outside the pen in case she smeared me, I heaved armfuls of rosemary and lavender over the fence. Bella lumbered over, her belly and udders swaying heavily from side to side. After a few sniffs, she suddenly became very excited and dived nose first into the herbs, rolling exuberantly onto her side and crushing them beneath her.  Then she lay for a few moments and appeared to enjoy breathing in their fragrance. Finally she heaved herself up and just sat there on top of them, gazing at me reflectively. I left her to it, happy to have provided such relish.

Around five, Oliver fed them. He noticed it took Bella longer to emerge from her sty, but still there was no sign of the laboured breathing to indicate she might deliver soon.

A couple of hours later, I was in bed reading Roald Dahl’s Matilda to Curly when there was a tap on the window. We looked up to see Oliver leaning on the window sill with a pair of blue disposable gloves on.

‘Bella’s having her piglets! She’s up to six already.’

Curly leapt out of bed from a horizontal start, flung on jeans, dressing gown and gum boots, and we raced over there. Oliver was in the sty with Bella, who had just produced number seven. We three watched as it wriggled around coming to life, and the cord broke away and it staggered over to its brothers and sisters, who were already suckling.

It must be quite something to lie there in labour while the babies already born nuzzle you for milk. The piglets squirmed around poking Bella's flanks with their snouts, clambering over her and biting anything that resembled a teat.

Bella produced an eighth piglet half an hour later and then her labour slowed down. ‘We could just leave her to it for half an hour,’ I suggested. We went back to the house. Curly extracted a solemn promise that we would wake her if ‘anything happened’. I read for a while before dozing off, and Oliver kept up a lonely vigil in front of the TV. I was vaguely aware of him leaving the house again, and aware that he was away for some time. Around eleven he came to bed.

‘She’s had three more piglets.’

We lay there in silent contemplation. Outside the full moon silvered the quiet paddocks, while in the bush block Bella lay in her sty mothering her new brood. Eleven she’d had, one after the other, over the short space of an evening. It seemed an incredible feat – and not a little bit awesome.


Bella yawns the day after delivering her eleven piglets