We have Babies! - Bambi's Triplets!

This was the surprise I woke up to this Sunday morning. Three gorgeous new bubs delivered by our stunning Bambi. It feels like we have been waiting FOREVER for a litter from Bambi. Her sister Blessing is still yet to fall pregnant, so we're lucky to have these bubs.

Bambi's update photos taken a few months ago. We have since trimmed her back to make delivery/feeding her bubs easier! They'd have a hell of a time finding her nipples under all that hair!

(Daddy Pig)

Our only little lady! Sadly, she was the straight-coated bub, but she is very pretty and will carry the curls, so is still a very gorgeous new addition to the stud. We called her 'May'. She will most likely look sheba-coated when grown up.

May has two little brothers too, both curly-coated sheba style pigs. Mowgli was the smaller of the two and has the nicer/larger ears, but not the best rosette placement.

Whereas 'Major' as a lot larger, has pretty good rosetting, but a fold in one ear. 

The ear-fold, or 'hem' thing has probably come through from some of the pedigree texel lines we used to introduce the curl. It's pretty rampant in the Australian/Brisbane pedigree texels. Which is annoying, as it means it's just another thing we'll need to try and 'breed out' of this new variety of pig. But it's hard to be annoyed when you've got a handful of cream/white curls in your palm. Seriously - how gorgeous are these guys as newborns!

We have babies! Meet Cupcake's Quads!

Our gorgeous new pet sow 'Cupcake' delivered her babies early in the morning on Anzac day here in Australia (25th April). Or rather, I should say 'Chelsea's' pig Cupcake 'squeezed her babies out' - as Chelsea so delicately put it! She was rather chuffed to find the bubs.

Cupcake delivered 4 babies, 2 girls, 2 boys. There is a mix of aby coated, rex coated, smooth coated and curls and rosettes, so I instantly assumed the daddy of the babies must have been the aby boar who maybe had rex parents? But I contacted Cupcake's original owner, and the aby boar who was one of the contenders as 'dad' was actually purebred. So shouldn't have carried any curl gene. There was a third contender though - a coronet/peruvian looking pet boar who may have snuck in and done the deed... so now we just watch and wait and see how these bubs grow.

This is the little 'Abyssinian' coated sow - we called her 'Poppy'. If she ends up with a longer coat, she'll likely look a bit more 'Sheba'. All bubs ended up with the lovely tri-colour markings.

This is the rex-coated boar we called 'Peace'. If he does by chance end up with a longer coat, he'll look texel.

This is the smooth coat boar we called 'Patch'. He has really pretty markings with a kind of brindle-like effect on his face. If his coat gets longer he'll look Sheltie.

And this is the girl who has the curls and some rosettes as well. She was born with a slight head-tilt as you can see in the image above when she was only a few hours old. She had grown out of that by 2 days old. She will look really funky if her coat ends up long, somewhat like our curly-coated sheba's, or maybe a little Alpaca-ish. I honestly don't expect the coats to do too much though as we don't know for sure what genes mum and dad carry. Or even which daddy was the real daddy (no such thing as paternity tests in the piggy world).

For now I just monitor Chelsea's over-enthusiastic need to cuddle them all at the same time, and we watch them grow!

Cupcake's quads at 2 days old. You can see Princess is looking a looking a lot straighter at this stage.

And this is the one-week update pic. Peace is stuffing his face, Princess is mid pop-corn, Poppy has her back to us and Patch and nestled in next to the cuddle sack. Mumma pig is just off to the side having a snooze on her bed while Kobe supervises the bubs. (you can see how big Kobe's belly is getting - we confirmed that she too is pregnant as well recently. Not sure who the daddy of this litter will be, but according to the previous owners it's most likely to be the rex boar we thought was the daddy of Cupcakes bubs. We'll know in about a fortnight).

We have babies! Meet 'Possum'

This little honey of a pig is 'Possum'. She was a big, gorgeous single bub born to Meadow, fathered by Talbot on the 22nd April. She has daddy's colouring, and a somewhat sheba-style coat. I had hoped with this pairing that mum and dad's recessive curl genes might match up and give me a curly sheba-style bub... but with only a 1 in 4 chance of that happening, it's not surprising that we got the straight coat we did. She should be homozygous for rosetting, hopefully (just means that she should hopefully have both genes for the rosettes), but we won't know unless we try breeding her to a non-rosetted animal. But I doubt I would waste a litter just trying to establish that because even if all babies came out rosetted, it still wouldn't be conclusive.

At this stage we just need to focus more on getting those rosettes in the best placements. You can see that she lacks the shoulder/jaw rosettes that would give her the classic sheba chops (cheek fur that sweeps out and back around towards the front of the face), and doesn't have a great deal over her body. But she DOES have an incredibly dense coat, and a slight chance that she's inherited a recessive curl gene - so we will mostly likely keep her here to test that. (ie. she will be paired with one of my curly-sheba coated boars when she's old enough, and if we get curly babies from the pairing then we'll know she does indeed carry the curl. Hopefully I'll have a boar with a better rosette placement to put her with by then too ).

But this is all many months down the track. For now we just get to enjoy one gorgeous fat, chunky little monkey of a pig!

These were her 1-week update pics. She'll be two weeks old tomorrow and has gotten even fatter and fluffier again!

 (Mumma pig - Meadow. Born to Lavender Vale Tex (pedigree texel) and 'Hannah' (pet alpaca x aby).

(Daddy pig - 'Talbot'. Born to Gizmo (pet curly coated sheba) and Xeraphina (pet merino looking sow).

Free Postage Weekend

All of our piggy products are located on our craft website www.furaddiction.com, so because we're having a FREE POSTAGE weekend for the fabrics, it means all the piggy products have free postage too! Bonus by default! ;)

Piggie Panties

After the sheer cuteness of the last photo we posted of Chelsea's pig Kobe wearing the doll nappy... we decided to try making our own versions....

This is the super cute, and hilarious 'ruffle' nappy!

We also have a more 'dignified' standard nappy! I still get the giggles every time I look at these pics!

They're definitely more of a photo-prop item, but will have some function, and may reduce the amount of wee that ends up on your lap while giving your pig a prolonged cuddle, but I doubt they'd catch it all. Pigs manage surprisingly large wees.

We whipped up a batch of 'Standard' nappies and 'Ruffle' nappies if you think your special cavy might like to do a bit of dressing up too.