What a day. I'm on Tony's farm near Uxbridge, Ontario. Tony has lots of vegetables, chickens for eggs (with meat birds coming this month), and pigs. Three sows and one boar, one sow ("Cow" - yes, that is her name) with 5 two month old piglets, one that was very heavily pregnant and almost unable to stand (I'll call her Red) - and expected to give birth shortly - and the other that wasn't expected to give birth for another 3 weeks (Blondie).
Well. Red made a pretty poor mother, and probably accidentally killed 4-5 of her piglets with one stillborn - leaving her with 5. Tony was in with her this morning, trying to help. I went down to feed the boar and the other two ladies, but was surprised to find Blondie not that interested in her food.
So as I was coming back up the field I went round to have a look in her sty to find that she'd given birth too, and was making a much better mum than Red! She had 9, one of which died, but leaving 8 suckling piglets (though 3 have cuts on them from where they have been trodden on my mum - this is normal, I believe, though sows seem to learn from doing!).
So Cow is now a grandmother (Red and Blondie being her children), and Tony is a lot happier - he was rather sad with Red making a bad fist of things, but cheered up when I told him what I'd discovered!
In other news - the weather here is beautiful, and I got sunburned a bit on my first day. There was a party last night, with a bonfire outside though later it got windy and the fire had to be put out. I've been feeding the pigs, chickens, planting out and potting up, amongst other things.
It's really lovely here!
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