Hi Mjd7658
Yes, Kitty878 is right. It isn’t too late to have a litter. Basically if there are males around and any females around are receptive to mating, they will mate.
It may be that a female had her first litter early, her first pregnancy failed, or the young died for some reason.
Normally the males go to hibernate earlier than the females and return earlier. Which naturally would have regulated how soon litters could be produced. These days, when so many hoglets are taken in for over-wintering, it’s possible that both males and femals are being released at the same time, i.e. earlier than females would naturally have been around. I wonder if this could be contributing to litters being produced earlier in the year than they otherwise might have been. If so, ironically, that could contribute to a second, ‘late’ litter, the young from which might need to be over-wintered by carers leading to a cycle of earlier and later litters.
Climate change could be contributing as well. But there are sometimes quite young hoglets around even in December. Gestation is about 4.5 weeks and after about 5 – 6 weeks the hoglets go it alone. Hoglets conceived now could be out and about with mother hog in a couple of months time. Whilst there may not be quite as much wild food around by then, there may still be enough, depending partly on the weather conditions, but the hogs/hoglets might welcome some supplementary food.
