I am often accused of jumping into things before I know the whole plan...like bringing home chickens and THEN building the coop. I admit, when I get an idea stuck in my head, I have a hard time being patient and doing things in the "correct" order. So when I met a gal who had decided to buy some pigs without any prior knowledge about them, I understood.
She purchased two 18 month old gilts (virgins) and wanted to use my boar to breed them. The plan was to breed the girls, sell the babies, and recover some of the original purchase cost - which was a bit steeper than she should've paid. I agreed to let her bring the girls to my place and let the pig love ensue.
Well, one of the pigs was pretty stressed out. It had taken two days and a cattle prod (something that I have never used with pigs) to get her to load into the trailer. The gal brought her directly to me and we unloaded her into a pig with other pigs she didn't know. It would've been better for her to have a pen next door to my pigs for a week or so, but I didn't have an empty pen to offer...so it was sink or swim.
This pig began to sink. She was panting and shaking - both signs of stress. I wasn't too concerned as most pigs experience some degree of stress when you transport them. But she kept lying down on my fence - the charger was not working, of course - and I was feeling some degree of stress thinking about explaining the damage to my husband. The gal used the cattle prod several times to move her off of the fence, but it was futile. She eventually settled in a corner. I figured she would relax over the next day or so and start moving around so I could fix the hot wire and the fenceline.
She didn't. By the afternoon, she was crawling on her front legs - something I have never seen a pig do. And believe me, it looked wrong. By the evening, we couldn't really coax her to get up at all. She tried to stand a little to go to the bathroom, but she was unsteady on her feet and quickly resumed her prone position.
Over the next few days I had to bring buckets of water right to her snout just to make sure that she was drinking. Pigs can die very quickly without water and I didn't want to let her die.
I talked with the owner - who had no suggestions at all - and told her that in my opinion, regardless of what was causing this behavior, it was very unlikely that this pig would breed anytime soon. In the back of my mind, I was thinking that maybe the cattle prod had caused some neurological damage. So she called the mobile slaughter truck. They are scheduled to come out next week. I guess this piggy has that long to figure out how to get back up, but honestly, I think she's headed to town next week.
It's hard to watch an animal go downhill so quickly and not have anything you can do. In this case, I don't think that there is anything that I can do other than try to keep her alive and comfortable until they butcher her. I question whether the meat will taste off due to the stress she's been under. But with her body condition (about 100 pounds overweight), I would suggest all sausage anyway so I guess the spices will cover any unusual flavor. Ahh...the joys of farming.
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