Kunekune Piglet - Picture of Geordie as a 1 day old piglet wrapped in a blanket to keep him warm, before I set up the heat lamp over his indoor crate.
Pictures of our pet pig, Geordie, as a very young piglet
Geordie being hand raised and at the start we had to hold the milk container for him to drink out of. This was using specialist dried veterinary milk for lambs that was used. The reason for this was that he refused to feed off his mum. He was the smallest of the piglets born and probably the weakest. It is surprising how active newly born piglets are and they compete for their mothers milk. The runt of the little often gets a lot less milk and in many cases needs to be given extra "bottle" feeds by a human. In this case Geordie just did not show any interest in feeding off his mum, probably due to being too weak to compete with his siblings.
Hand raised Kunekune piglet, Geordie, is in this picture. When he was slurping his milk he certainly managed to get milk all over my wifes fingers as well as over the paper towels. We used to clean his face after he had finished drinking his milk as he had it all over his face. Funny to watch him feeding.
Hand raising our Kunekune piglet, Geordie. His initial owner had managed to get him to take some of his mum's milk and this helped him get some colostrum that is found in the mothers milk, this helps protect the young animals from illness as it contains antibodies. The use of orphan lamb milk meant that he was given as much milk as he wanted, we basically fed on demand for the first few days. Orphan lamb milk is purchased from local farm suppliers or online and comes as a dry milk formula that is made up with cold / or warm water. You can buy replacement lamb milk from Amazon.