looduskalender.ee

Always using local materials

 

The sow is pregnant with her piglets for three months, three weeks and three days according to old people. Maybe not precisely that long, but certainly less than four months.

 

Large sows are no longer seen moving in the herds. The birthing nests that are built everywhere of course differ somewhat from each other, depending on the material that can be had in the surroundings. In reed banks the nests are made of reeds, very good to build with and a warm material. Of course years are not alike, this year the nest bottom must be laid out on a thick carpet of snow.

 

Movement of people near the sow’s birthing nest can often end with the nest being abandoned. The owner of this nest knows that around noon there will be something edible on the feeding ground a few hundred metres away, and who comes late goes without. Silvi used the time for quick photography.

 

As underlay a soft needle cover that will be clearly thicker and warmer at the „crucial moment“. Older females have more piglets – six or even more, but very young sows have only a couple. The birth weight of a piglet will be about three quarters of a kilo, and the first few weeks are spent in the nest. After that they are sturdy enough to follow the sow. The piglets are suckled for up to four months, and in August their striped baby coat usually changes into a dark young boar coat.

 

The nest carpet layer gets thicker