Happy Easter
Farming isn’t a 9 to 5, and you don’t get holidays off. It’s an everyday 24-hour-a-day job. If you are lucky, things will go smoothly, and you can step away from it for a couple of hours, but that didn’t happen for us this year. When we woke up on Easter, we realized that two of our does were showing signs of going into labor, so I didn’t feel comfortable leaving. At around 8:30 pm, Tilly’s water broke. An hour later she still hadn’t delivered any kids, so I gloved up and went in. The first kid was in the wrong position. Its head was facing back, and its feet were forward. I tried to pull its head forward, but it was stuck. While working on getting it into position, I looked over and saw that Athena was also now in active labor, and the first kid was almost out. She seemed to be doing fine, so I went back to work on Tilly. I was sure it was taking too long, and the kids weren’t going to make it, but I finally got it into position. The huge kid came popping out, and it was alive. I looked over again at Athena, and she had delivered three more kids. Quads, I could hardly believe it and a first for our farm. Tilly quickly delivered two more kids unassisted, bringing our total number for the night to seven. I waited around to make sure that all of them were strong and healthy and that they were all able to get colostrum within the hour. It was well past 2 am before I could go to sleep, and I had to be up again the next day by 6 am to milk our cow. Sometimes this life is exhausting, but being able to spend the next day with seven happy bouncing little kids made it all worth it.
