Ten Stiff-Legged Souls

It's been a while. For which I excuse myself on the grounds that I have been busy playing father figure and role model to ten small piglets. Yes, in a surprise turn of events, on 26 February, Strawberry gave birth.

Just a few days after purchasing the three piglets from Paddy's village - bought to make up for Strawberry's apparent lack of fertility - Strawberry began showing the first signs (swollen teats; swollen vulva) that she might have some buns in the oven after all. Assuming that the pregnancy was the fruit of Roy's labours, we penciled in the due date for early April (three months, three weeks, three days after fertilisation). How wrong we were.

I got the call from Nepear at 11.30 on a Thursday morning, and ran out of the office shouting that my pig was giving birth. I got home in time to see the last four pop out. I've heard the suidae birth process compared to 'shelling peas', which is a fair description. Preceded by a grunt from the mother, each piglet slides out the rear end, staggers to its feet, and spends a few seconds getting its bearings before stumbling around to the nearest teat, which it happily suckles for several hours.

There were twelve in all, though one - a big pink female and the last to come out - was still-born and another was too weak to feed and didn't survive the night. Both were buried in the garden. The ten that remain - five boars, and five sows - are feisty and inquisitive. And terribly cute. Eight are almost entirely black, and two are pink (mzungu pigs, as Nepear calls them). Those that I can distinguish have names - Hamlet (the small pink one); Maisie (the big pink one); Jackson (the one with the funny nose).

When they're a month old, we'll castrate four of the boars, leaving the strongest intact to use as breeding stock. Castration helps reduce the risk of the dreaded 'boar taint', and castrated boars fatten faster than their intact brothers. At eight weeks old, all the piglets will be weaned and separated from Strawberry, for at least as long as it takes for her milk to dry up. She'll then be ready for mating again.

Once they've been weaned, we might sell a few of the piglets due to space limitations. By six months, those that we've kept will be ready for slaughter. We'll probably keep one or two of the nicest looking sows for breeding stock. The rest will be sold or eaten. Such is the cold, heartless logic of the universe.

Of course, the identity of the father remains a mystery. Judging by the dates - and pigs are very punctual - Strawberry must have been pregnant when we bought her. The cheeky swine.

Week one - sleeping

'Hamlet' on my knee

Happy face 

Patience and the pigs