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.

Hatching Chicks at Home

I was in the feed store this morning, on my way somewhere else with the family, when a gal asked me a question about hatching her own chickens at home. I couldn't help but talk with her for a few minutes (even though everyone in the car was waiting). I didn't get to share all of my thoughts with her, but I thought I might share them here.
When you want to allow a hen to hatch eggs out at home, you first need to make sure that your eggs are fertilized.  This means that the hens have access to a rooster.  And the general rule says that you want about one rooster for every twelve hens to make sure you have ample coverage.  Of course, you can also just buy fertilized eggs from someone else (or even from a hatchery) and skip the roo altogether.

So, with your hens getting love from their roo and the weather getting warmer, you will eventually find a hen that is "going broody."  This means that she has decided now is a good time to hatch eggs.  Many breeds of chicken are specifically designed not to be broody...because when they brood, they stop laying eggs.  Cochins are well-known for their broodiness, so they may be a good bet for hatching eggs at home.

And just because you use a cochin for an egg momma, doesn't mean that all of her babies need to be cochins.  You can choose any eggs you collect from your flock and put them under a broody hen.  It is best to choose good-sized, nicely shaped, clean eggs.  Do not wash them or refrigerate them before putting them under your broody hen.  Refrigerating can kill the embryo and washing them takes the protective bloom off of the egg, making the embryo susceptible to outside bacteria.

When I decide to let a hen "set" (hatch out her eggs), I usually give her a week of setting wherever she chose to go broody.  Then I move her and the nest to a cage where I can control the environment a little more.  Right now I have a broody hen who chose a nesting box about four feet off of the ground.  She might like it for safety now, but her babies are going to have a long fall when they first start to leave the nest...and they won't be able to get back up there with momma at nighttime.  So I will move her and the nest into a crate on the ground.

If you make sure that your hen is committed to brooding (i.e. she has been doing this for at least a week) then moving her and the nest won't be too big of a deal.  I use a shallow box to place the nest in.  I get my hubby to hold the hen - who will be very mad through the whole process - while I scoop up the nest and arrange it in the box.  I then put the box in the crate along with a feeder and waterer, and then hubby places the hen in the crate and we lock it.  She may stomp around for a few minutes, but eventually she will settle back down on her nest.  I then cover the front of the crate with a sheet or a towel.  Hens like to be in dark, quiet places when they brood.

Keep track of approximately how many days your hen has been setting on the eggs consistently.  About 21 days later, you should have babies hatching out.  After 23-24 days, you need to remove any eggs that haven't hatched.  If none of them did, you can try to sneak day-old chicks under her, but I've never had any luck with it.  A better way of keeping track is by candling the eggs every few days.  This way you can see clearly which eggs are progressing and which ones are duds.

Once the babies have hatched, you have a choice.  Momma can raise them in the crate for quite awhile, but I tend to let her and the babies out within the first three days.  She will keep them warm and make sure that they get enough to eat.  She will protect them as best she can (although you will have a higher mortality if you don't keep them in the cage).  And as they grow, they will know that this place is home.

Breaking a Brooding Chicken

This time of year is when you will have hens "go broody."  This means that your once well-behaved, lay-an-egg-a-day, mild-mannered chicken changes into something completely different.  She sits in a nesting box for hours on end.  She fluffs up her feathers and growls (yes, chickens can growl) at you whenever you come near.  She stops laying eggs and instead protects whatever eggs she may have under her.  Sometimes, other hens will sit in the box with her and lay new eggs to add to her "clutch."  When you reach for the eggs, she will peck at you.  Hard.  And if you do manage to steal the eggs out from under her and throw her out into the yard to get a drink, she runs around with her wings out and her hackles up clucking at everyone, as if they care what she's doing.
If you raise chickens for eggs, it can be bothersome to have a hen go broody because it means that she will not be laying for the duration of her "condition."  There are lots of theories on how to break a broody chicken out of her desire to hatch eggs.  Most of them include cooling the chicken's belly off.  This is because broody hens increase the temperature that they radiate from below.  I think this may be why they wait until the weather warms up for brooding...it makes staying warm easier (although you'll always have the nutcase chicken who tries to hatch babies in the dead of winter).  You can try ice cubes in her nest.  You can dunk her belly in cool water (as long as it's warm outside, so she doesn't catch a cold).  My method is to use a dog crate or rabbit cage.  I call it the "brooding box."

When I have a hen start to brood and I am not interested in chicks, I relocate that hen to a crate or cage without any bedding.  No straw, no shavings, no towel.  Nothing.  I give her a waterer and a feeder.  The amount of time that she must stay in solitary is completely up to her, but it usually takes three or four days.  I can tell she's ready to come out when she doesn't react to me reaching in for her food or water.  If I accidentally misread the signs and let her out too early...I'll know because she'll go back to the nesting boxes.  In that case, she gets a few more days in solitary.  NEVER would I recommend withholding food or water from a chicken.  She will get over it but she needs to keep up her strength.

Egg Theives

We occasionally run into the problem of theivery on the farm.  Not your average burglar...we have dogs to take care of that.  I'm talking about egg theives.  They come in a variety of sizes.  We've had rats running through the coop.  They're tricky to get rid of because you cannot really set traps for them without accidentally catching chickens.  We've had chickens eating eggs...the only cure for this one is culling.  Sounds brutal, but I've never met a chicken who tasted eggs and then voluntarily quit eating them.  We've even had dogs sneaking in and having a snack.

But recently, two new theives have made their presence known on the farm.  Pigs and crows.  Now, the pigs have been on the farm for quite awhile, but they have never had access to the chicken coop until now.  We had to put the pigs in the same pen as the coop when we first arrived at the new place.  It wasn't a problem for a long time.  I mean, I knew that they would occasionally get themselves an egg or two that was laid in their pen...but they never had a real supply.  And when they were in the pen with the coop, they couldn't get into the coop itself because the pop door was made to fit a chicken, not a pig.

But I misjudged the ingenuity of a pig.  I am sure that their reasoning went something like this...

Every day we see R come into our pen to feed us.  She then opens the big white door on the side of the coop and goes in.  When she comes out, she has a bucket full of eggs.  Therefore, if we open the big white door, we will find a bucket full of eggs!

And that is just what they did.  They rooted their tough little noses on my hollowcore door (which was not meant for such abuse) until they got a corner of it off.  Then they ripped at it until they had their own pig-sized pop door...and access to all of the eggs that they could eat.  As a bonus, they could also snack on all of the chicken poop that collected under the roosts.  Yes, our pigs (and probably any pigs given half the chance) eat chicken poop.  Truly "organically" fed.

My egg collection dropped to almost nill...as did the bedding in the nesting boxes because the bucks who share their quarters with the pigs and chickens, thought that the nesting boxes were a salad bar of goodness set up just for them.  Every time I would rebed the boxes, the goats would eat it. 

I eventually "fixed" my broken door with a couple of 2x4s placed strategically accross the doorway.  At some point, I want to replace the door, but at some point, I also want the pigs to have their own pen.

The crows were somewhat of a surprise.  I knew that they eat carrion, but I didn't know that they were egg theives.  We had a dead duck out by the pens one day that drew the attention of a few crows and all of a sudden, all of my outdoor nesting boxes were empty of eggs.  And if that weren't clue enough, the duck eggs that I was leaving under the goat feeder (just in case a duck went broody) disappeared overnight.  No broken shells.  No nothing.  It had to be the crows.  In retaliation, because I would not harm a wild animal without good cause, I let the boys loose with their bb guns to scare off any crows that they see.  They, of course, relish this mission as any young boy with a bb gun and nothing to shoot would.  I don't see crows as a problem in the near future.

Guck or Doose?

I have seen some amazing love run through my animals in the springtime.  The bucks wag their tongues and growl in a low moaning fashion to get the attention of their beautiful does.  The boars snort and grunt, pushing their sows around until they stand still for some nooky.  The roosters do their flashy dance, skimming the ground with their wings as they turn circles in front of their hens.  But today I saw a new kind of love.  Star-crossed lovers if you will.  A love between a duck and a goose.

We only have one goose and she tends to hang out by herself since losing her sister about a month ago.  We have a small flock of ducks...two drakes and four hens.  Apparently, Jill, our goose, has decided that she may as well join the flock.  I watched (a bit taken aback, to be honest) while Pong - one of the drakes - mounted her and tried for a good five minutes to make a love connection.  I thought for sure that Jill would object, but she didn't.  In fact, I watched her preen him later in the morning.

So maybe this is the start of a new generation of deese or gucks, as it may be.  J suggested we try to add a chicken to the mix and make our own version of the tur-duck-en...a goo-duck-en.  I'm not sure it's advisable to mess around with mther nature like that.

Eprinex for Cattle

I deloused the goats today.  All of them.  It didn't take very long.  Asha thought that there was some sort of conspiracy against her and she wanted nothing to do with it.  I finally tricked her in the pen by just scratching her head from across the feeder for awhile and then dosing the back of her neck with the other hand.  I'm sure Lilo thought that I was planning to milk her so she ran, but I caught her.

I thought I'd share some information about delousing goats.  Most goat owners have found that there are really very few products that are specifically labelled for use with goats.  This is a frustration felt by many.  The only thing that I have found to combat it, is to learn how to use drugs that are labelled for other livestock successfully with goats.

An example of this is dolouser.  I have used Co-Ral before, but there is a withdrawl period for milk and meat.  A friend suggested Eprinex Pour-On by Ivomec.  It has no withdrawl period for meat or milk and is very effective with biting lice on goats.  It is meant to handle internal and external parasites in cattle, but it only takes care of the external ones on goats.
The dosage is the same because it is determined by weight.  You won't need the huge syringe in the box, but you can use a small syringe minus the needle for administration.  1cc (1ml) per 22lbs.  My smaller goats are about 50 pounds, so I used a little over 2ccs.  My larger goats are around 125 pounds so I used around 5ccs.  The only one that I'm not sure about is the baby.  He's nowhere close to 22lbs yet, but if I don't treat him, then he will be the only safe port in the storm for the lice...and I hate to see him crawling with the things.  I dosed him with a 1/2cc on the back of his butt...just a drop.

You are supposed to pour the medicine from neck to tail down the center of the back.  Part the fur and make sure it makes contact with the skin.  It works just like the flea drops you use for your dogs.  I prefer to wear gloves when I do this because inevitably I get some on my skin and, well, I just don't want it on me.  I found that with most of my goats, I can walk right up to them and while I scratch their ears with one hand, I can dose them with the other by running the syringe against the grain of their fur, thus parting it down to the skin.  You don't want to be in the middle of a dosage and have the goat run off so make sure to do it quick.

Again, a suggestion from the goat guru, I will be treating my herd three times, not twice.  I will make sure that the distance between doses is no more than 14 days, because that's when the lice hatch.  Doing it three times will make sure to catch anyone that didn't die in the first two rounds.  Wish me luck!

Premature Babies and Goat Lice

We've decided that not only was the pot of coffee premature, so were Lilo's babies.  After examining the dead buckling, I can see that his front teeth are not out of the gums yet, a sign of prematurity in goats.  It also makes sense that the premature delivery was caused by a stress of some sort and that's where the meconium came from.

My best friend, and goat guru, Sarah came by this weekend and checked all the goats.  She believes Sox is not pregnant - something I was hoping for as she's a bit small.  We checked Stitch, Asha, and Tumbleweed and felt babies move with all three.  But their ligaments are not loose yet so we have a way to go.  I think they may all be a few weeks to a month out.  Lilo was due around now, so her babies were only about a week early.  Looks like the rest of the girls waited for the next heat cycle to get pregnant.

Another, less pleasant, discovery...my herd is infested with lice.  The first indicator is that some of the girls have rough/curly hair.  This is a symptom that something is wrong.  When you part the fur, you see lots of little pink dots all over.  Those are lice.  I actually had checked the girls last week but missed it because I didn't see any lice MOVING.  Not necessary.  If you see a bunch of pinhead sized pink specks throughout your goat's fur and she seems to be itchier than normal...it's lice.

This is not the same kind of lice that live on people.  Even if my boys go out and rub their heads all over the goats, these lice will not make them a home.  But it needs to be addressed.  I will be going to the feed store this week and getting pyrethrin powder or liquid and treating everyone.  Yuck.  It still makes my skin crawl to think about these little buggers all over my girls.