Farrowing Pastured Pigs

Our Kune sow Honey successfully farrowed six piglets last saterday in her A-frame shelter with no heat lamp,farrowing rails,or assistance from us, and they are doing fine even though the temperatures have been in the 20's at night!

So how are we doing this? Keep reading to find out how you to can succesfully have piglets on pasture, even in the winter.

Shelter

Having an A-frame shelter will enable you to have piglets withour having to use a heat lamp or farrowing rails. This is because the shape of the shelter causes the heat given off by the mother to fall back on her and the piglets, keeping them warm. The slanted walls also prevent the sow from accidentally crushing her piglets against the walls.

Bedding

Another important thing for successfully farrowing in cold weather is bedding. Straw is best as it insulates well and the sow can build a proper nest for her litter. Shavings don't stay piled up well, which makes building a good nest impossible.

It's best to put in at least 6-8 inches of straw in a few days before the piglets are due. This gives the sow a chance to arrange it the way she wants. If you are farrowing in warm weather and move your pigs regularly you don't need to put any bedding down. Clean grass makes a good enough bed for them.

Feeding

We don't give our sows any more food than normal until after the piglets are born. This is one of the best ways to prevent farrowing problems. Once the piglets are about a week old you can start to increase the amount of grain your sows get. Last time we had piglets we were feeding about 12 pounds of grain a day by the time the piglets were about 3 months old.

That was for two sows and their litters. How much exactly you will need to feed depends on how many piglets the sow has, how big the sow is, the weather etc. A starting point would be to increase the grain by a cup per week for twelve weeks. If the sow is noticibly loosing weight then go up an aditional cup each week. In our experience weight gain hasn't been a problem at all.

In case you are wondering, this amount of feed is for the mother and the piglets, we just spread it all out on the ground for all of them. After twelve weeks the piglets should be pretty much weaned if you leave them with their mother, and you can adjust the amount of food they are all getting so that each piglet is getting about 1% of their average body weight in grain each day.

If you are weaning the piglets yourself by seperating them at 6-12 weeeks stop increasing the sows grain when you start removing the piglets and start going down when they are all gone, once you are at double her typical amount wait until she is back up to a good weight before going down any more, unless she is already looking good by the time you get to that point.

Do I Need to Give Iron Shots?

You may have heard about the need to give iron shots to piglets because pigs milk is low in this mineral, however, if you are farrowng on pasture this is not a concern. Most of the soil in the USA contains plenty of iron and the piglets will get all they need from the dirt.

Water

When we were starting out with Kunes we read on someones website the importance of using shallow water pans because when the piglets start eating their mother's grain she will sometimes use her snout to fling them away and they could hit the wall and bounce off in to the waterer.

It sounded absolutely ridiculous then, and we didn't believe it. Well, after seeing our own sows send their piglets flying (sometimes into the shelter walls), I will tell you the same thing! It is hard to believe unless you've seen it, so we will try to get a video when our piglets start to eat solid food!

Weaning

Whether you let the sow wean her piglets or do it yourself is up to you. For our first two litters we seperated them ourselves, and the second two we left them with the sows. It is definitely easier to let the sows do it, but sometimes the strain of a large litter can be too much.

If your sow seems to loose weight or not be able to gain it no matter how much you feed, and the piglets are at least 6 weeks old I would wean them. The best way to do this is to move the sow to a new area and leave behind two of her biggest piglets, this will give much better results than if you were to leave the mother and take the piglets.

Every two days after this take away the next biggest piglet until there are no more left. If there is a runt you could leave it with the sow untill she dries up, one piglet shouldn't be too much for her.

If you are selling piglets you can start selling them at 6-8 weeks.

Regardless of how you wean you should seperate or neuter any boars by 3 months.

Fencing

For information on fencing check out our blog Tips For successfully Pasturing Your Pigs.

Should I Seperate The Sow When She Farrows?

Yes, you should seperate her from any other pigs for about a week before and after. Seperating her for a week after will give the piglets time to get big enough that they won't be so prone to getting crushed. I woulden't wait longer than that though because you risk serious fighting with the other pigs.