Birthing Pictures Of Our Piglets (graphic)

When we bought Sally and Nellie back in October, 2006, the plan was that they would one day bring forth piglets for us to raise at Pure Water Hollow. With the help of our boar, Rufus, the plan has come to fruition. Our first piglets were born on July 13th and 14th!

We had the opportunity to be eyewitnesses of the birthing process with Sally! I posted about it the other day with several photos, but I saved the more graphic pictures for this post. The children were amazed at the miracle of birth, but they thought some of the pictures may not be very appealing to some people, so if you are of a weak disposition, you may just want to look at that first post, and skip this one.

After waiting in the barn with Sally for about 3 hours, the first piglet finally came at 11:24pm on Friday night. It was out before Erica got the camera up, but here is the first picture of the first piglet born on our homestead:



About 6 minutes later came number 2:





Number 3 came out tail first 10 minutes later, but It seemed to be fine:



Here he is all cleaned up but with the umbilical cord still connected:



Erica was able to snap quickly with number 4. She got a picture of it "crowning", another shot of it most of the way out, and then a picture of it all the way out, all within about a 20 second time frame:







We cut each umbilical cord off and dipped it in iodine, just as a precaution. Matthew looks like he might be grossed out a bit in this picture, but he really was not. Keep in mind we are in a dark barn using lantern light and flashlights and it was close to midnight at this point.



The fifth piglet also came out feet first and Erica got two quick amazing pictures of him entering the world of air:





Here come number six just 4 minutes later:



Sally seemed to work a bit harder for the last two. She had gotten 6 babies out during the last 36 minutes of July 13th, and then took a break for about 24 minutes. Here is the seventh piglet born, now on the 14th:





And here are several pictures of the last one which came just a few minutes later:









And here is the happy family all together, with the little ones enjoying a nice meal and the mama enjoying a bit of rest:




2 comments
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Kitty on August 13, 2007 at 1:12 pm
That is so amazing to watch. I wish I could have been there. Thanks for sharing that with us.

Kitty
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Morning Sunshine on August 13, 2007 at 3:07 pm

Thank you for posting these. Life is miraculous!