It's finally happened!
I've bred my first generation of satin-carriers. I put Midge in with Aldo (both Show pigs and in such great form!!) as soon as I brought them home.
Midge is a Self Dark-Eyed White and she is the matriarch of my brood. She is an excellent mother, and is known to behave like a mother to other piggy's litters as well. She just can't help herself. She's a mum through-and-through. She even breast-feeds babies that aren't hers ....!
I particularly love the double chin. Very grandmotherly!
Aldo is my one and only satin pig. I entered him in the Canberra Royal Show and he came second, with good, even satinisation and type, great ear size (floppy) but lost points because he wasn't yet big enough. So now I need to fatten him up some more. Apparently, when you put males in with females in a love shack, the males always eat first, so he should be getting bigger as we speak.
I just love the translucency near his nose.
Beautiful big verandah ears.
The genetics behind satin breeding is complicated and tricky. I need to do more research on it before I understand it myself, but generally, breeding a satin with a satin-carrier, produces 100 per cent satin babies. I'll get back to you on that one when I have my first little satinised babies in my hands!
So, pairing Midge and Aldo produced 3 babies who are all satin-carriers (Ss). I got 2 crested dark-eyed whites, and one red-eyed smooth coat white. Two boys and one girl. I'm definitely keeping the female satin carrier. The boys I think I'll need to sell, as I'm running out of room.
They were born on the eve of our holiday away, 31 March 2010 - of course! Unfortunately, it was a colder night and when I checked on Midge, she was still giving birth. The pink-eyed runt baby must have been fairly squashed in-utero, because it looked quite mangled and was cold and lethargic. The female was the biggest, by far more than her brothers. Not wanting to lose any, I kept them all inside on a heat mat for the night. The pink-eyed runt perked up a bit after several hours and luckily, lasted through the night. But I have no doubt we could have lost him had he stayed in its outside cage. Midge was concentrating on the other two as if she had already resigned herself to losing little pink-eye.
But it all turned out well, and to look at the three now, you'd never guess they came out all different sizes. Unfortunately with all the drama, I didn't take a photo of them at birth to show you.
