JHP Homestead Farrowing Thread - Now hand raising piglets!

JHP Homestead

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Thanks. DH tried again several more times and I even tried a couple times but neither of us could get the snare on it. We gave up around 5:00 this morning.

After a couple hours of sleep we called the vet yet again and he’ll be out when he can. I hope he can pull it out. At this point i expect the piglet and any remaining are dead so we just want to save Gert.
 

AmberLops

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I'm sorry that this happened :(
I hope the live piglets do really well after this whole thing is said and done and that Gert will be okay as well :hugs
It sounds very frustrating....please let us know how it goes with the vet.
 

JHP Homestead

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The vet came out and wasn’t able to pull the piglet out either. He thought her birth canal was really small for a pig her size, he could reach the piglet but couldn’t fit his hand around it at all.

So, it seems like our options are to salvage her and raise the piglets ourselves, or dose her up on lots of antibiotics and hope she can survive the infection from at least one piglet rotting inside her <yuck>. The vet said the antibiotic route only had about a 50/50 short at working so as much as I hate it, we’re leaning towards option 1.
 

JHP Homestead

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We’ve decided to butcher Gert in order to salvage the meat, and raise the piglets ourselves. It sucks because she’s being a good mother to her piglets, but such is farming.

We do our butchering ourselves, so DH is going to take tomorrow off work and we’ll get her done then. Spent a good chunk of today making room in the freezer and getting all the butchering supplies out.
 
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