Piglets - Unborn, but Alive and Kicking

There’s a palpable sense of excitement and anticipation here at Apple Island Lodge.

Rosie’s tummy has dropped and she’s very clearly a sow-in-pig who we can expect to farrow very soon.

But today’s main story is that it’s very clear Bella is pregnant too. Although her nipples (sorry, here we go) are less uniformly enlarged than Rosie’s, her tummy has dropped and she is waddling around like a clucky duck.

This has put a spring in my Other Half’s step. Last week, morose at the prospect of his sow not being in pig, he visited a neighbouring pig farm. He was hoping to pick up some tips, the more skilfully to interpret his sows bottoms. He came back a reassured man.


‘Some of their vulvas are like this!’ he told me incredulously, his thumbs and forefingers forming a circle the size of a saucer. Meaning that the tiny incremental swelling and pinkness he’d been noticing in Bella and Rosie’s bottoms means NOTHING and that he has been bending my ear about pigs’ fannies for NOUGHT.

But I’m delighted that his trip to admire and learn from another man’s pigs backsides had such a powerful restorative effect on him. The hour they spent together was evidently contentedly and well spent.

As if to confirm the latest diagnosis, Bella is now behaving more like a creature in the late stages of pregnancy. She spent most of yesterday slumped in a pool of dappled sunlight in the bush block, her rump against an accommodating wattle sapling. Every so often she’d heave a great sigh.

As she lay there with a bed of native grasses crushed underneath her, her bulk spread out into an immense dollop of bristly, black and white pig.

My Other Half had told me that he’d felt the piglets moving around inside her. I crept up so as not to disturb her, and put my gloved hand on her warm, bristly stomach. I felt an unmistakable kick, perhaps from a miniature trotter.

Taking my glove off, I put a bare hand on the soft skin just above Bella’s nipples, and felt small fluttering movements underneath it. Bella put up with my attentions with a bout of heavy breathing.

Before long, my Other Half and daughter Curly had joined me and there were lots of hands on Bella’s tummy. Rosie ambled over, curious to see what was going on, giving a small grunt of inquiry. Bella harrumphed in return. Who knows what was said?
‘Alright there, dear?’
‘Oh, they’re just palpating me again.’

Later in the day we split them up so they’re in neighbouring pens, each with their own little house. Rosie is in the new, eco-hut made of recycled materials. It seems appropriate, since they’re such great recyclers of our kitchen waste. They each have a heat lamp for the piglets, and lots of straw. Pretty soon they’ll start building their birthing nests. Nine days to go.