Mixed news today – sadly little Arabella took a turn for the worse yesterday and was found dead in her incubator this morning. She had been having trouble digesting her feed, which meant she was not putting on weight and developing. In cases such as this, I often wonder whether the mother knew there was something wrong with the hoglet, and rather than waste her resources feeding it, she abandoned it – this is the reality of nature.
One of our very poorly hogs miscarried 4 hoglets overnight, mum probably did not have the strength to continue the pregnancy while being so ill. Hopefully the mum will start picking up now that her body is not trying to develop hoglets.
Four new hoglets were born here overnight, which were found by one of our volunteers while cleaning cages. Mum was brought in with a huge, infected strimmer wound on her back, which is still healing. Hopefully she will be able to cope with feeding her hoglets while her wound recovers.
We now have 4 litters of hoglets with their mums in our care, with more expected.
