Piglets Have Arrived
Some days on the farm are hard, and not just cleaning a dirty barn hard, but nothing going your way hard. I woke up Tuesday morning sore, sick, and sunburnt from the previous day's fieldwork. Wanting badly to just stay in bed doesn’t make my morning chores go away, so I got up and started my rounds. While milking the goats, I got the most milk I had ever gotten. Then, of course, the last goat proceeded to kick the bucket on me, and milk got everywhere. After that, I went into our birthing stall and noticed our sow was in the early stages of labor. By mid-afternoon, she was ready to push, and the weather in the barn was sweltering.
While waiting for the babies to come, I started hearing our goats screaming and pigs banging against the barn. I looked over to find our neighbor's big scary ram standing there staring at me. He had broken through the fence to play with our cow, and she wanted no part of it. I called the neighbor to let them know what was happening, and then I watched as he and my son spend an hour trying to scare it home. On my son's way back to the house he didn’t properly latch the gate. Later when I looked through the barn window, I noticed all the goats had escaped. We had to trick the adult goats back into the field with food and run around after the kids who thought we were planning a fun game of chase. During all of this, our sow finished delivering, and thankfully everything went smoothly. She had six happy healthy little piglets, three girls, and three boys. I cleaned up after her and went to start my night rounds. I did all our normal evening chores and then set about to start the night shift watching the piglets. Just when I was starting to relax into the slow part of the day, looked over to find that and the goats had gotten out again, oh and the cow, and all the older pigs. I had been so tired that did the same thing as my son, and forgot to shut the latch on the fence. I called my kids outside to help, and after some running around we tricked them all back into the pasture. To say it had been a long day would be an understatement, but it wasn't over yet...
I didn’t want to let the day get to me, birthing days are normally my favorite, who doesn’t love new baby animals. We don’t believe in a farrowing crate, and I can’t stand to lose piglets to squishing, so we take turned for the first 2-3 days watching the piglets around the clock. We make sure they stay back when mom is getting up and down and also watch to make sure the runts are getting enough colostrum. I have seen in past litter how fast a piglet can go down if they don’t get enough. This particular sow is a great mama, and turns out I didn’t need to worry. Even without our watching we wouldn’t have lost one piglet. This was also our smallest litter yet there were plenty of nipples to go around, so everyone got enough to eat. It was a long night watching over the animals, and I counted down the minute until my oldest son relieved me to start his shift. But because I always like to end stories on a positive note. It was the most beautiful night, stars were everywhere, and the perfect was weather.
To everyone on the waiting list for piglets, we will start sending out messages this week. I give each person two days to figure out what they want, and then I move on to the next person on the list. Thank you, everyone, for your continued support!