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.

Birth Plans

Rosie

I’d like to nest overnight before I have my babies. I appreciate the straw that you’ve put in my sty, but I’ll be supplementing this myself with sticks, twigs, bits of fallen bark and any other debris I can find in the bush block. I’ll be trundling around during the night fetching this into the sty. Don’t disturb me. I like to prepare. And please don’t rearrange it, I think it looks nice like this.

Thanks for the lavender offcuts. That’s a nice touch; it gives the sty a nice scent and offsets the smell of mud a little.

When the time comes, I’ll just lie on my side and huff and puff. I’ll lift my back leg up a little when there’s a piglet coming out. If you could give it a moment to come round and then put it under the heat lamp, that would be helpful, thanks. Last time I had six but that was my first litter. This time it might be more, so be prepared.