🍼 Piglet

A piglet (suckling pig) is the young of a pig, living on the sow's milk for its first weeks. On the first day it hunts for a teat, and by day four 85 to 95 percent of piglets have one of their own. Each piglet then keeps to its teat, and the habit holds through lactation.

Feeding is neatly arranged. First the piglets massage the udder with their snouts, which makes the sow release oxytocin. Only then does the milk come, and only briefly: about 20 seconds. The piglets keep massaging for a while after, until the feed ends, whether the sow or the piglets end it. Late in lactation the gap between feeds averages about 50 minutes. A sow's milk peaks around the third week at about 10 kg a day, though sows differ a lot, from 3.5 to 16.5 kg.

Which teat a piglet gets matters less than you might think. In 76 litters the heavier piglets did tend to sit nearer the front, but the link was weak. A birth-weight lead of 0.25 kg usually lasted to three weeks whatever the teat, and teat position explained only about 2.3 percent of the extra variation. In another study, where piglets were weaned at 28 days, front-teat piglets were heavier, but after weaning the ones from rear and middle teats gained more per day.

An elephant calf nurses for years, and one at a time; a piglet shares the sow with a litter and for weeks. For the mother, see pig; for milk in general, see milk; for the other young, see who drinks milk: young animals and feeding.