Pigs Without Moms

An infant piglet's life is confused and dangerous, and mom is usually to blame. Some sows eat their young, and many roll on them or trample them to death. Another bad habit of sows is producing more pigs than they can feed properly. The average sow has only eight or ten teats (some of which may not be functioning), and she often farrows as many as 16 pigs. The runts and laggards that don't connect with a functional teat during their early mealtimes are gone pigs. Hunger makes them too weak to compete in later battles.

These difficulties pain hog-raisers as well as piglets, but conservative farmers consider them inherent hazards of the business, subject at best to minor improvements. Not all non-farmers, however, are quite so pessimistic. Last week, on a farm at Shoemakersville, Pa., platoons of little pigs were enjoying a peril-free infancy, courtesy of Chas. Pfizer & Co., manufacturers of pharmaceuticals (TIME, Nov. 26).

Sound Sleepers. The Pfizer Co.'s interest in livestock began with the discovery that its antibiotic, terramycin, when mixed with the feed, increases the growth rate of pigs. At first the Pfizer pigmen tried feeding terramycin to the brood sow, in hopes that some of the strengthening drug would filter down in her milk. This proved impractical; it took too much terramycin. Then Pfizer decided to take the piglets away from their mothers at the age of two days and raise them on synthetic sow's milk spiked with terramycin.

The milk itself was no great problem. Pfizer's pigmen compounded it scientifically of skimmed cow's milk, fat (such as corn oil), assorted minerals and vitamins, and of course, terramycin. But when they tried to feed "Terralac" to newborn pigs In a sort of incubator, they ran into problems of pig psychology.

For one thing, Pfizer men say, little pigs are sound sleepers. When one is really asleep, it can be rolled around or bounced on the floor without waking up. It will even sleep through meal periods and die of malnutrition. About the only thing that will wake a piglet is the deep, rumbling grunt that the mother sow gives when she "lets down" her milk. When they hear it, the more alert pigs wake up and scuttle squealing to the teat line. As they suckle, they squeal with joy, and their racket wakes the other pigs.

Sound Effects. So the Pfizer people selected a resonant sow and recorded both her mealtime grunt and the joyous squeals of her litter. That does the trick, says Pfizer. When the deep-sleeping pigs hear the sound effects, they wake up in a flash and connect with rows of rubber nipples charged with Terralac.

Now in the Pfizer pig-brooder the recording plays every hour on the hour, 24 hours a day. The little pigs thrive mightily under this forced draught. None are trampled or eaten; no luckless runts are left teatless. Pfizer says that out of 3,000 pigs scientifically nursed on six farms, only 5% died. The normal mortality under the sow's regimen is 21% to 33%. The pigs grow faster, too. They reach 28 Ibs. in six weeks instead of the normal eight weeks, and they attain marketable size 40 days earlier.

All this, including the sound effects, has been reported to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, whose swine experts are interested but still somewhat skeptical. They point out that the necessary apparatus is expensive and complicated. They fear that the sows will be damaged physically or psychologically when their piglets are taken away. But their real worry is a problem of acoustics. They suspect that under average farm conditions, the recorded dinner music will not wake all the little pigs and save them from the dangerous error of missing a meal.

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