Q's About Piglets

I am getting some piglets next weekend. I am getting 2 females, and 1 male. The male is a runt, probably about 1/2 the size of the rest of the litter. He is slightly thin, but just mainly small. He will be a "pet" if he makes it. He did have an abcess on his hing leg from being steped on by his momma, but it has been lanced and looks good. Any tips on feed/vitamins/ ect that might make the chances for this little guy any better?

keep him seperate from the other two, that will cut the fighting down drastically as well as you can make sure he gets his share. The runt is often just that because he couldn't fight his siblings off to get to a better teat, the same goes for after weaning.

Don't let him get used to sleeping on the furniture! It's amazing the damage a "pet" pig can do when it's grown up.

dun

Put him in a barn with a highly intelligent spider named Charlotte. ;-)

lol, he may become a pet, but it'll be a barn pet.

We always ate the runts. Yum.

MikeC":1ajv1j00 said:

We always ate the runts. Yum.

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I take it you don't have a daughter or sister named Fern ;-) .

Just as an aside, a bit of interesting info I learned in my reprodution class the other day. The 'runt' of the litter becomes the runt because, a couple of weeks after fertilisation the embryos finish their floating around business and attach to the endometrium of the uterus. Spacing of embryos is really important in pigs, seeing as how there's so many of them, and they have to spread out in such a way that the mother recognises that she's pregnant, so her body supports rather than terminates the pregnancy. So anyway, the embryos are all moving around a little to get themselves in the best position, and invariably one gets stuck in a spot that has a lower number of caruncles (attachment points), and a decreased supply of blood. And suprise suprise, poor little sucker get destined to be the runt - destined to be a poddy pig if it was unlucky enough to be born when I was a toddler and oh so obsessed with piglets. Or destined to be MikeC's dinner.

I love pigs, they do actually make really good pets. I don't love them so much when they're sinking their teeth into your thigh and somehow squealing at the top of their voice at the same time, though.

Do not put that runt by himself! Pigs are extremely social animals and do not do well when raised alone. We tell people this all the time when they buy fair pigs and I think some don't believe it. Pigs will compete with one another for feed and all will grow better. I'd give all of them a worm shot and put them on a good quality feed (in a feeder, not poured in a pan or trough) and a good source of CLEAN water! Hogs have a very keen sense of smell, water needs to be clean.