I am a mother of two girls and my husband is often away. This has given me an appreciation of how hard mothering can be. I keep myself pretty busy with my livestock farm south of Buffalo. I tend to forget things between the cows, the chickens the pigs and the kids, and it seems to me that time moves especially fast in the summer.

One warm morning I was feeding my Tamworth and Herford heritage breed mama pigs in the five or more acres of woods they call home. I noticed that one of my mama’s looked like she was going to farrow (give birth) soon. I had some errands to run but soon John, a young Amish man that helps on the farm one or two days a week, would be arriving. So, before I packed up the kids to run into Buffalo for a few hours I left John a note asking him to bring the mama pig down the hill to an old garage we often use for farrowing. The weather had been very wet and damp and I didn’t want to risk putting her in one of our A-frame huts. If she had dug out a nest for herself in the dirt under one of those it may have flooded and that would have been awful for the babies and her.

The girls and I returned from the city around 10:30PM, and I found the mama pig was snoring contentedly in a fluffy straw nest in the garage. No babies. Phew! I thought. That was close!

Morning came again to the farm and it was another beautiful one. The girls were still sleeping so I grabbed a cup of coffee and headed out the door to see if mama pig had any new arrivals. The sun was adamant about burning off the morning dew. Our barn cat, Savannah greeted me with a stretch and yawn from a patio chair. The air was filled with the hens clucking away in their outdoor pen.

Walking toward the garage I noticed that the wire panel used to keep mama in had been ripped away from the wall. Mama was gone!

Ok, breathe. She has to be here somewhere. She is probably under a tree somewhere or in the barn looking for food. So, I thought.

Down went the coffee and off I went. I looked everywhere. No mama pig. How one looses a 500lb pregnant pig, I was not quite sure.

I filled a bucket of grain, got on the John Deere Gator and retraced my steps, but this time much faster. When the mama pigs hear the vehicle, they assume that they are about to be fed. Five mamas greeted me with very loud grunting. Feeding them ensured that they would leave me alone; I continued on, driving through the enclosure they call home. I headed to the west side of the lot down to the bottom side of the ravine. I stopped several times, shutting off the engine and calling “Mama Pig!”

I had been looking for a few minutes when Travis, our farm dog (who we refer to as the K-9 Farm Manager) scared the daylights out of me. He flew past me on the driver’s side of the Gator with what appeared to be a smile of victory on his face. Travis slowed and trotted along the Gator while I called for my missing mama, occasionally darting in and out of the woods. We traveled up the south side of the ravine to scope out the east side and that’s when Travis took off. I drove another 600 feet after him. I stopped. I could only see his head. He was sitting there in the bushes giving me his I-am-such-a-smart-dog look.

I stopped the Gator and got off. Travis began walking into the brush and I followed. The next thing I heard were some very angry grunts and back came Travis tail between his legs, almost knocking me over. It was mama pig!

Once she saw that it was me and not the dog, she calmed down and turned around, heading down a small knoll and under a large pricker bush. She turned around and looked uphill at me. There in the patch were nine little piglets all in an uproar because their mama had left. The nest was on a little patch of dirt supported by the roots and branches of a pricker bush. There was only one way in–the front door. The brush would be impenetrable to most wildlife. But here, mama’s nine little piggies were safe.

She must have had the babies before we had brought her down to the farrowing garage. She was resting when I saw her the night before and probably panicked when she realized that her litter was alone in the woods.

Pigs are smart and resourceful. They make excellent moms. For me, this was another great example of how pigs can lead happy healthy lives without the confinement stress that their commercial counterparts know too well.

—Jo’El Drajem runs Blossom Hill, a livestock farm south of Buffalo, NY with her husband and two small children. She is a member of Slow Food Buffalo and the Livestock Breed Conservancy.

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