what a day...

So everything's just fine... Mimi had her piglets. Great. But something's wrong. She's not eating much, she's fatter than she needs to be for just having had kids and she seems like she's got very little energy.

Thanks to a friend in Orange Grove (who runs M & T feeds), I found that Mimi may have more kids inside her. Is she pooping? Yes. That means the bulge in her stomach isn't gas or uh, other.

I told Mike and he called the vet to get something called Oxytocin, which should help her expel anything in there that's not supposed to be. After a little more investigation, we decide to take her to the vet - and did so at 4:00ish yesterday afternoon. My friend had inadvertently saved Mimi's life.

We arrived and the woman took her temperature (a bit high) and gave her the oxytocin, then we waited for about 20 minutes. She expelled blood, but no kids.

"What kind of pig was she mated to?" An American Yorkshire, we say... too big for that little potbelly to handle, apparently.

After the Oxytocin didn't work, they had to go in to see what they could find. And find something they did, but the vet's hands were too big. They called in a smaller-handed girl, but she couldn't get what seemed to be a snout of another kid out.

Yes, there were kids.

So now what? They were going to have to sedate her and see if they could get the kids out (they used a rope!) and that worked. There were two kids. Both dead. I had to leave at this point. It had already been a pretty upsetting day for me. But I didn't stay away for long.

I came back and they were finished. The kids that they pulled out were huge - probably just about as big as the living kids are... THREE days later!

We brought Mimi home, clipped her nails, cleaned her ears and her eyes (because it's a lot easier when she's sedated) and put her back in the stall. We kept the kids in a basket and put them next to her stall so she wouldn't try to get them out and then inadvertently sit on them and kill them.

Mike was making dinner and I went out to the barn to check on her and put her kids with her. She was grunting a lot, but as soon as the kids were by her side, she laid down and began feeding them and was quiet.

Because there can be lesions for kids that stay in (although the vet doesn't think she felt any in there), there could be issues in the next day or two with infections that could be fatal, but Mimi was happy to eat this morning (after an initial refusal), and she seems a little better.