No, the big bad wolf did not come huffing and puffing at their door, but the piglets were in grave danger.  This may seem like a sad story to you, but we are actually feeling quite positive about it.  Here's the hard news...we only have two piglets left.  But, this is also the good news because it could very easily have been none.  Things all happened so quickly.  We told you about Dottie, our first Berkshire to have piglets and a first time mom.  She had 5 piglets, but we found two dead in the nest just a few days later, probably from accidentally rolling on them in the night.  After that the 3 little piglets became very active and spent the days running back and forth with the rest of the group.  Their little legs kept right up with the big pigs!  They were jumping out of the way to avoid being stepped on and Dottie appeared to be looking after them so we breathed a sigh of relief.

We check on them every day, but things went down hill faster than we could have imagined.  On Monday everything seemed normal.  I noticed that Dottie only seemed to have a few swollen teats in the front, but I figured this could have been because the piglets had just nursed out the milk from the rest or maybe her body was responding to only having 3 piglets to feed so she was producing a little bit less milk.  Either way, no big deal, the piglets looked great and full of energy.  On Tuesday Tim checked them - all there, nothing unusual.  On Wednesday, I saw them running with the group, but this time they looked very thin.  In fact, one little girl looked like a skeleton!  Their bones were poking out and they looked so skinny.  They were still running around very active, but clearly were not getting enough to eat.  And Dottie didn't seem to have any milk available for them.  For some reason, she was drying up.  I fed the big pigs to make sure Dottie was getting enough nutrition - lactating moms need more than average food and water as it takes a lot of energy to produce all that milk.  Dottie ate some, but was not overly hungry and her body condition looks fine - she's certainly not thin.  The piglets snuck under the electric fence and nestled into the tall grass while the big pigs ate.  They slip under the fence all the time, but always come back to mom when they are hungry or scared.  I decided to give them some time to see if Dottie could feed them more since they all seemed active enough.

Later that afternoon I checked on them again.  This time Dottie was laying on her stomach and the piglets were running around her, but she wouldn't roll over to expose her teats to them.  Strange.  Maybe she knew she had no milk for them, or maybe she was shutting them off.  Could this have been intentional?  I've read that many first time sows are bad mothers to their first litter, but then turn out to be great moms the second time around.  We decided that the next morning we would have to go get some milk replacer and feed the piglets.  But around 9:30 pm Tim went out to close up the chickens and it was cool and drizzly so he went to take a look at the piglets.  He went frantic when he couldn't find them.  After what seemed like forever searching for them in the dark he finally saw one move in the tall grass outside the fence.  They were huddled up away from the rest of the group shivering and starved!  He scooped them up and brought them in the garage where we put a heat lamp on them, towel dried them, and tried to feed them the only thing we had - raw cows milk. 

Cow milk can be hard for pigs to digest, so it's not the best thing, but they couldn't wait for the stores to open in the morning.  The little girl who looked like a skeleton was very far gone.  Her body was cold and she wasn't moving.  We used a straw to try to force some warm milk into her belly, but she wouldn't swallow it.  We wrapped her in a towel and put her under the heat lamp.  For the next few hours we tried repeatedly to get her to drink, but no luck.  In the morning she had passed.  We were too late.  We didn't save her.

We got some milk replacer (powdered milk you mix with water like baby formula) and the other two piglets gobbled it up, but this change in diet led to scours (diarrhea).  This is very dangerous with all babies.  They can dehydrate quickly so we stopped the milk feeding and gave them two days of nothing but water and electrolytes.  They are active and drink readily, but the scours can be very hard to stop.  Today is the day that we begin to introduce milk again to see if their system can handle it.  We are also adding a bit of Gerber's Rice Cereal to their milk which will hopefully help.  Only time will tell.  I hope they stay strong and can pull through.  We are giving them every chance to flourish so it's up to them now.  I have no idea what happened with Dottie.  We will let her breed again to see if the second time around she does better.  I sure hope so because she's a great pig!  Birdie is due next.  She really filling up with milk now and looks heavy with babies so we think she'll deliver any day now.  Oh I hope she's a good mom to her piglets.  Now we are a bit more prepared to help if need be.