Not sure which one you guys mean.
One of the boy piglets got squished last night.
Rest are active and look fine. Hopefully mum won't make that mistake again.
It doesn't happen that often. Possible to be highly common in commercial situations, but shouldn't happen much in pasture.
The piglets huddled against mom for the night that I saw late last night. Mom goes out to potty and comes back, easily come of been too hard to see where a piglet wandered off to and got in the way. If she laid on it with most of herbweight, even a few seconds could of caused too much internal damage for the poor thing to make it. He was bruised up on one half side, but not flattened, and he was tucked into some hay off to the side like he tried to warm up, but never could. So mum must of realized it, but it was too late.
I know a lot of pig farmers would cull for that, but pigs can see well in daylight, let alone at night.
I was trying to figure out why that sow looked so round around the middle...Potbelly...makes sense now. Are they strictly pets? I don't know of anyone that eats potbelly pigs. I guess you could though.
Too bad about the little one. It does happen. I've never known a farmer to cull a sow for it unless she has a habit of doing it a lot. I do know one farmer who culled a sow for intentionally stomping her own young. He wouldn't even breed the two that survived. They were butchered as soon as they were big enough. He didn't want that trait being passed on. Most times pigs are pretty good mothers, but accidents do happen.
Tons of people eat them, but not a good idea to admit it. Tons of people who will go crazy on you for mentioning eating a pet pig. PBs are americanized versions of Vietnamese pigs, who were raised by small families to butcher.
There's other breeds of small pig for small families out there, but most people are still trying to charge too much for them.
People hate the PBs because they are too fat or greasy, but they won't get too round if you don't over feed them and none ever were greasy. Just pointless breed hate, like anything else gets, there's always a hater out there.