Piglets, piglets, and more piglets!

This morning we awoke to K telling us that we'd better get up because Ruby had her babies and two of them were dead.  Not a great way to start the day.  Especially since I spent a long time last night trying to coax Ruby into the now-vacant goat pen so that she could farrow in peace.  Instead, she had Jaws, the daddy, two of her older daughters (about 200 pounds each), and two goats in with her for the event.  It's no wonder that we were losing piglets.
I got dressed and headed out to the pig pen.  Goodness sakes, there were a lot of piglets!  I went to work clipping umbilical cords and cleaning up the afterbirth (something that the chickens thought was a wonderful treat, bleck).  I counted seventeen babies in all...and yes, two were dead.  One was very small, maybe the runt.  The other was pretty average.  There were no noticable marks so our best guess is a crush injury.  Especially with three other pigs in the pen...it would be easy for a baby to be in the wrong place and get smooshed.

One of the babies seemed very lethargic and kept walking away from momma to lie down.  I picked her up and her umbilical cord was dripping blood.  I think it may have broken off too short and was allowing a lot of blood loss, which would account for her lethargy.  I decided to give her a quick boost and went over to Lilo, our milking doe, to get some warm, fresh milk for her.
While I was over with Lilo, Z shouted that we need to do a recount on the babies.  J and I told him that we were sure that we had counted correctly and there were only fifteen still alive and with momma.  Then J asked Z if there was one that was covered in slime...and sure enough, Ruby had just delivered the eighteenth baby!  I pulled the amniotic sack off of her and put her close to Ruby's belly where she began to root for a snack almost immediately.
I gave the little girl a drink of milk, which was not something she really wanted, and then set her back down.  She slowly wandered back over to momma.  I will keep an eye on her, but I would rather Ruby raise the babies than me.
After that, we broke open a fresh bale of straw and rebedded the nest Ruby had made.  She is in the pen without a shelther (thus the reason I wanted to move her last night).  We have a small shelter in there that the babies could go into if they get cold, but I want to do everything we can to make sure that they stay warm enough during the night.  Usually, I would have a heat lamp running 24/7 so that if the babies get cold, they can huddle under the heat lamp.  But life is different when you live off-grid.  One heat lamp for one hour is the equivalent of ten hours of the fridge.