SURPRISE: Piglets!

We knew it was going to happen sooner or later. I mean, we have male and female pigs, together in the same pen, so it was kind of inevitable.

Only, we've been a bit distracted the past few months, and nobody was paying attention to the timing . . . and when Boo checked on the pigs this afternoon, one of them was giving birth!

The first few piglets were already born and dead when we found them, but two of the babies were rescued from the pen alive. Unfortunately, either because of our involvement, or possibly just because she is a first time mother, the sow refused to let her piglets nurse . . . in fact, she attacked them whenever they got near to her.

You know what that means, right? Uh huh. We're bottle feeding piglets now.

Sadly, the odds are against these little guys. They didn't nurse from their mother at all, so they didn't receive the first milk, called colostrum, which they need to help them fight off diseases. We'll give it our best shot, however, and see if we can keep the babies alive.

Another of the pigs is pregnant (we discovered that when we were dealing with this one), and so I'm hoping that, if she gives birth in a day or two, and if we can keep these piglets alive until then, maybe we can sneak these two in with the second litter. We manage this easily with our dogs, but we don't know much about pig nursing . . . so it will be an experiment.