A Change of Plans

We may not be posting for a while here on the blog.  We have had a sudden change of plans and are packing up the farm, the fam, and everything else and moving.  We will be farming out some of the livestock and selling others.  This is not something that we are doing on a whim.  Things have been extremely challenging as of late and we cannot pass up this opportunity.

Ruby and Jaws will be living with some wonderful friends of ours.  They have only had pigs for a little while, so we will be communicating with them via email to make sure all goes well.  Jaws will have a second pretty lady to snuggle with on this farm and they are hoping for a couple of litters.  The piglets that Ruby has now will be going with her (of course) and they may sell them or keep some for more breeding gilts.

Neptune and Sox are being sold to the neighbors.  They are the same people who bought Asha's twins.  I think that Sox will end up being a great milker for them.  And Neptune is a good herd sire - and not related to the twins.

All of the chickens, ducks, and the goose have been sold to various local farms.  Some of the chickens will be kept as layers, but some will end up in the freezer.  I think the hardest ones for me to let go of were the beautiful slate blue hens...but there are always more chickens.  We did, however, ask the neighbors to keep Crystal the chicken.  She doesn't lay very much any more and I didn't want her butchered by a farmer.  Z was very close to her.

Lilo, Zeus, Tumbleweed, and Asha are all going to Sarah's house.  She has a couple of friends willing to house a few and she will be housing a few.  I know that they will be well cared for and that in a year's time, they will still be happy and healthy, ready to come home.

So, until I have a farm again (and I will, I have no doubt), I may not have much to post about the Rogers Roost Ranch.  But as they say, you can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl.  I'm sure I'll find my farm fix one way or another.

Friends for Thelma and Jill

Our two lonely orphan girls got some new friends today.  Jill - our lone goose - and Thelma - our lone duck - have been spending much of their time together but I wanted to increase their flock a bit.  I found a listing online that sounded promising.  A gal was trying to rehome her five ducks, a drake and four hens.  That was perfect for us.  You really only want a single drake (if any) and the hens earn their keep with eggs.  I made a deal with her to trade the five ducks for ten pounds of fresh pork.

I brought the whole flock home in the back of the Mazda.  It was stinky and loud, with five backseat drivers telling me to slow down, but we made it home.  When I opened the back of the car, they began quacking.  Thelma heard the commotion and joined in the chorus.  Jill honked in recognition of her fellow waterfowl. I brought everyone out and set the cage near the pond.  We don't have a large pond for them yet, but we are working on it. In the mean time, we have several smaller "ponds" for them to bathe and play in.  Jill immediately came over to investigate, sticking her big beak into the open cage door, sending the five ducks into the far corner.  I shooed her away and tried to get the ducks out.  The eventually headed out the door and straight into the pond.

Everyone seems to be getting along just fine.  All five of the new ducks fit snugly in the pond.  They seem to enjoy floating around.  Yesterday I watched Jill observing from the side.  Then, like the unwanted kid who cannonballs into the pool, she somewhat gracefully slipped into the pond - and displaced enough water to float everyone else up over the sides and out of the water.  The other ducks quacked in disgust while Jill looked as if she were confused about the abrupt ending of the party.

A Zombie Chick Named Wanda

This morning I was walking around the house when I noticed something floating in the duck pond.  It was one of the two baby chicks that Penguin had brooded.  The chick must have been trying to get a drink, fallen in, and then was unable to get back out.  I lifted in gently out of the pond, but it was cold and not moving.

I actually thought that there might be a chance for this little one.  Her eye seemed to still be twitching and she was limp - not rigid - so she hadn't been dead for long.  I watched for breathing, but saw nothing.  I massaged her chest a bit in a pseudo-cpr movement.  I didn't figure that my actions would help anything that wasn't already working, but it couldn't hurt.  Her little chest was still.  I set her down on the milking stand near by and went inside.

Later in the day, I noticed that she was no longer lying on the stand.  I guessed that a crow must have seen her little lifeless body and stolen her away for lunch.  I never once questioned whether or not she was alive again.  That is, until I noticed Penguin clucking to her chicks and TWO chicks came scuttling out of the brush toward their momma.  The dead chick was alive and running around the yard!

The only conclusion we can come up with is that she is actually a zombie chicken now...well, not exactly.  Honestly, I should have thought about the fact that this little chick was COLD and dead.  In EMS, nobody is ever cold and dead - they must be WARM and dead.  Her little chicken body was probably just in shock.  I'm not sure if she was breathing very slowly or not at all when I found her, but the warmth of the sunshine was enough to revive her resilient little body and she came back to us.

I've decided to name her Wanda.  The name has a history behind it.  She nearly drowned in the pond so I figure she must be a bit like a fish...a fish called Wanda.  I sure hope she's a girl cos a boy named Wanda might need a whole different explanation.

My Hero

My husband does not think of himself as a hero.  He would never describe himself as amazing or unusual.  He shies away from words with strength of character or virtue.  But to me, he is all that and more.

We live in a dust bowl.  Outdoors on the ranch this summer can only be described as miserable - windy, dusty, and hot.  But while I cower in the house under the guise of feeding the children or doing the dishes, my husband is outside getting things done.  Without fanfare.  Without complaint.  Because it needs to get done.  It's that simple.

He spent the hottest parts of the day pounding fence posts and stretching wire for the goat pen.  He didn't complain or quit when the wind kicked up.  He just kept right on going.  That's how he is.  If something needs to get done, regardless of how miserable he is, he does it.

At this very moment, my usually pale-skinned, goatie-sporting, sunglass-wearing hubby is one color.  And it matches the earth exactly.  He is sitting in the cab of a bobcat tractor and is redefining the drifts of dirt that line our driveway.  His vision is known only to him.  Through plumes of dust that engulf the tiny tracked monster, he pushes and carves until it looks just right.

It cannot be comfortable to be swallowed up in a cloud of dust.  When dirt devils swing through our yard, I scrunch my eyes tight and hold my breath until they pass.  But J can't do that in his twister.  And he doesn't.  As far as I can tell, from my vantage point over the kitchen sink (I am actually doing the dishes), he just muscles through it like it were a spring breeze.  Nothing amazing or unusual.  Only to me, he is.

No More Free Range...except chickens.

We have finally finished the goat and pig pens.  It has been almost a month that these animals have been running free throughout our five acre farm.  The relief as the final stretch of fence went up is indescribable.  Just so nice to know that things will look about the same outside when I wake up in the morning as they did when I went to bed the night before.  Having the goats and pigs contained has made so many things easier.  We don't have to worry about feeding anymore...the goats cannot get into the shed with the grain buckets anymore.  We don't have to guard the chickens so that they can eat something before the piglets get to it.  We don't have to make sure that the chicken coop is impenetrable during the day so that the piglets cannot get inside and eat eggs.

The piglets and goats do not share my enthusiasm and have been very vocal about it.  But they will adjust.  Ruby and Jaws never did take a walkabout.  They respected the two lines of hot wire we had around them - even when it wasn't on.

J brought the pig shelter over from his dad's house and moved the chicken coop out of the way of the fence line.  Again, I don't know how people live without a crane truck.

We don't have a true shelter for the goats yet, but we put an easy-up in the center of their pen which creates a nice square of shade for them.  We will have to build something before fall so that they have real protection from the elements, but for now, shade is all that they really need.

Upcycled vendor signs for shade and windbreak.

We decided to use some old vendor signs we found as a windbreak and shade-maker for the pens.  I used fencing wire and attached it to the field fence.  I'm always looking for ways to jazz up the farm and these signs were perfect.  They definitely help with the wind (which seems to be constant) and they are creating pockets of shade for the critters inside the pen and out.

We have built a lot of fences, but I think that these two pens are a couple of the best ones.  J is proud enough of them that he is willing to take credit...and that's saying a lot.

New Chicks on the Block

Finally, our two broody hens have hatched out some chicks.  It has been an incredibly long time since they both decided to brood.  There were several false starts that ended in omelets for the piglets.  We didn't invite them to dine, they just helped themselves.  But our two girls were not to be deterred.  What should normally take about three weeks, took almost two months.  And how many chicks did we end up with?  Three.  Yep.  Just three.

There were five eggs left in Penguin's nest.  A few of them had been laid very recently and she had just added them to the clutch.  Since I didn't know which were which and she has abandoned the nest (meaning that she will not wait to hatch any more babies in this clutch), I broke open the eggs.  Sadly, there were two chicks that looked to be in their second week of growth - not big enough to hatch out and live.  The must've been laid later than the other two that hatched.  I don't blame her for giving up.  She had been setting for a very long time.

Because we have only had two roosters available to all of the hens, we know that these babies have at least 1/4 barred rock in them.  It looks like the one that Jasmine has hatched out may end up looking like a barred rock.  It is black with a little yellow spot on its head.  The two that Penguin hatched are a grey color with the yellow spot.  They may have gotten less barred rock in them.  We never know until they feather out completely what they will end up like, but it's a good guess that they will have some of those black and white traits of their fathers.

The great thing about these two finishing up on their nests is that I don't have to question whether or not an egg is fresh.  We can collect all of the eggs every morning from now on.

Fair Pigs?

Ruby and Jaws have been living in the same pen for over a month now.  We haven't seen Jaws show much interest in Ruby yet so we are hopeful that she may come into season this month.  The significance of that can be explained with two words - fair pigs.

Many people who sell fair pigs use AI in order to time their litters.  Others have enough sows that they can guarantee at least a few of their litters will be fair pigs.  We have one sow and one boar.  We have chosen to allow them to mate when it suits them, within reason.  But fair pigs are an awesome thing!

Fair pigs need to be born the end of December or beginning of January so that they are at butcher age the beginning of August (for our fair).  People pay a premium for fair pigs.  Many people actually order their piglets from fancy farms outside of the area - spending lots of money to "buy" their way into ribbons.  Our 4-H group really focuses on the entire experience and most of the kids buy local pigs.  But fair pigs generally go for $150 a piece as opposed to regular butcher pigs that are sold at $75 a piece.

There are a few things that we will have to do to make sure our piglets are good for fair pigs.  First, we will need to make sure that they have access to free-choice grain.  We will build a small creep feeder so that the piglets can eat without momma getting it.  Second, we will work to socialize the piglets from the beginning.  That means spending time with the piglets EVERY day.  Sounds like fun, right?  But remember, it will be January when we start this whole thing.

The biggest benefit for us to have fair pigs is that we have two boys who will be showing pigs next year.  K and M will both be taking pigs to fair and selling them at auction.  In addition, we will have Z raising the backup pigs - so that he doesn't feel left out.  There are always people interested in buying backup pigs at the fair, so we will be able to create a savings account for Z for the following year.  With our pigs giving us fair pigs, we will be able to choose the best out of the litter and not have to purchase piglets from someone else.  I haven't decided whether or not we would sell piglets at $150 or a little less (just because we know how hard it is to afford them for some).  Maybe we will create a scholarship for a piglet.  That'd be cool.

Water Conservation in the House

We had a load of water delivered to the house yesterday - about 4000 gallons.  Our cistern hold 3000, so we had the guy fill our other smaller tanks as well - two 350 gallons and one 250 gallon tank.  It's nice to have a full tank of water again, but it concerned us how quickly we burned through the last load.

Some water cannot be saved.  The livestock take quite a bit of water in the heat of the summer - especially the pigs who like to knock their water over to make a better wallow.  Just filling all of the troughs (and the wallow) takes about 50 gallons and we do that just about every day.  The washing machine is a top load washer and while we know how much we could save with a front load washer, the price is not in our budget at the moment.  So we have to figure about 30 gallons of water per load.  And with three boys and a very dusty farm, I do at least a load a day.

But there are places where you can save water quite comfortably.  So while we were in town yesterday, we got some of the supplies needed to reduce water usage in the house.  Here's a list of what we bought:

1.  Water conserving shower heads - brought usage down from 2.5 gallons/min to about 1.2 gallons/min.  The original showerhead was horrible for conservation.  The average ten minute shower was costing us 25 gallons!  The one that we got for our bedroom was made by WaterPic and actually had 5 settings that could be used at full force (1.2 gallons/min) or reduced to half (.6 gallons/min).
2.  Faucet aerator heads for all faucets - keeps the spray nice and strong but uses almost half the water.
3.  Toilet conversion kit - now, this was a real cool gadget we found called the HyrdoRight Dual Flush.  It takes the place of your original flapper valve in the tank of the toilet and you exchange your flush lever for a two-button system. When you pee, you use the small button and the gadget uses a small amount of water to flush (really just enough to refresh the bowl).  When you poop, you use the larger button and the gadget uses the full tank of water to flush.  It was super easy to install and it has a five year warranty so we figured it was worth a try.  So far, it's great!

We don't notice the difference when using these things in the house - they have very little impact on how you can use your water.  But in the grand scheme of things, we will be saving hundreds of gallons of water a month.  And when you live off-grid, that's HUGE.

Building the New Pens

I think that if you ask any good rancher what the most important skills to have on a farm, fencing would be on the top of the list.  And I agree.  We have built a LOT of fences for our farm.  But this last fence system seems to be the creme de la creme of fences for our family.

We are trying to use things that we already have, as we really don't have the money for new supplies.  One of the most important things for creating a strong fence is the corner post.  We have used a variety of objects for this purpose - pivot legs, round posts, four by fours, even steel pipe.  This time, we used railroad ties.  J dug down about two and a half feet, volleyed the incredibly heavy tie into the hole and then packed it in tight.  He alternated between dirt and water, packing in the layers.  He finished it off with a bag of concrete.  These corner posts aren't going ANYWHERE.

In order to make sure that the corner posts are aligned, we used a string line - something you use to sight a straight line, a square - used to make sure that we are coming off of the corners at a 90 degree angle, a tape measure - to make sure that all of the sides are the same length, and a level - to ensure that the corner posts are plumb.  This isn't a fast process, but it sure is worth the extra time when you end up with a spectacular pen that everyone - including the pigs - admires.

After three days, we have all but one corner post in the ground and have hung two gates.  We cannot put in the final post until we move the chicken coop, as it lines up right in the middle of the coop.  But because we are creating two pens, side by side, we can at least finish one of the pens without the final post.

Hanging gates is another job that takes time to do right.  We start with the gate opening.  We learned awhile ago that when you buy a four foot gate, you need a four foot opening.  They have already planned the additional space for you so if you add six inches for swing, you will have too large an opening in the end.

We used a scrap of four by four to set the gate on so that we could plan for a small gap under the gate when it.  We learned last year that you cannot make the gap small enough to keep piglets in, so we are really just shooting for a gap that won't allow bigger animals out.  With the gate standing on the four by four, we mark the bottom bolt on the post.  This time we broke a bit drilling the first hole, so J pulled out his super-duty drill bits and we drilled it again.  Using the circle end of a crescent wrench, we twisted the first bolt into the post.

Next, we slid the gate over the nub on the bolt (don't know what you call it...it's the hinge part).  We then measured for the top bolt.  Another thing we've learned over time, is that you are best off sliding the hinge on the gate itself down, putting the bolt in so that the nub faces down, and sliding the hinge up onto it.  This way, the pigs can't just walk over to the gate and lift it off of the hinges.  You can guess how we learned this lesson.

Now J is a perfectionist, so we also made sure that the gap we had between the gate and the post was the same at the top and the bottom.  While this isn't exactly necessary, it sure makes for a nice swinging gate.  In addition, because we made sure that our posts were straight, with the gate lining up perfectly on the post, you can "set" the gate in any position and it will stay there.  Pretty slick.

We will be stretching the field fence in the next day or so.  J can't find the fencing nails so we had to head into town to get some.  Once we've got those, we'll be able to finish the first pen.  Should be nice not to have free-range piglets anymore.

Top Ten Reasons NOT to Own a Buck

10.  They pee on their own head.
9.  They stink.
8.  They chase the girls all the time.
7.  They pee on their own head.
6.  They make weird noises while wagging their tongues at you.
5.  They perform inappropriate sexual acts on themselves, in public.
4.  They pee on their own head.
3.  They bash heads with each other until they bleed.
2.  They drink their own urine and the urine of others.

and the number one reason not to own a buck...

1.  THEY PEE ON THEIR OWN HEAD!!!

Zeus is Recovering Well

I thought I should mention that Zeus seems to be back to his usual self.  I still can only guess at what made him so ill - most likely severe dehydration or heat stroke.  It took him over a week to get better.  Looking at him now, over two weeks from the original incident, he is back in full form - chasing the girls and being a grody boy goat.

Piglets in the Coop

We barricaded the chicken coop so that the piglets wouldn't get into it any more and eat eggs.  It worked for quite awhile and our egg production went back up to about a dozen a day.  But this morning, I went out and the barricade was open.  Probably the wind, but it could've been the pigs or the goats who knocked it down.  Unfortunately, the eggs that they ate were the ones that Penguin (one of the broody hens) was just about ready to hatch out.  She has been trying to hatch a brood of chicks for over a month.  Early on, she lost her nest to the piglets and had to start over.  So again, she's without a clutch.

Luckily, the piglets didn't get Jasmine's eggs (the other broody hen).  So I took half of the eggs from Jasmine and put them in Penguin's nest.  Hopefully that will give her a head start.  I know Penguin will not give up until she hatches her brood.  And I would just put her in a brooding box and break her of it, but the neighbor has asked me if I have any chicks for sale and I'd love to get a few over to her.

We will be reinforcing the barricade and then fixing the door in the next few days.  But we have to get the goat fence (which will also become a piglet fence) up first.  Honestly, I think that the chickens will be fine if we can get those piglets out of the picture.

Loading the Pigs, Part Two

This morning we went to court to talk with our landlords about moving out.  Although we have already moved out, they had started the eviction process and so we had to come to court to give them the keys to the house.  Unfortunately, our boar pig, Jaws, didn’t get the memo.  We tried to load him again this morning, but he was unwilling to leave.

In mediation, we explained that we were completely moved out of the house, the shop, and the property with the exception of a 600 pound pig.  We happily handed over the keys and explained that we have no intention of staying any longer than necessary but that pigs load when they want to and Jaws isn’t ready to load.

The landlord waivered between anger and understanding.  Initially, he complained that he wanted to take possession of the house NOW and that we had postponed this too long.  I asked him if he would like to try to load the pig for us as we had no solution other than to wait for Jaws to be ready.  He dismissed that and commiserated that it must be hard to get a very big pig to do what you want.  We left it with the understanding that we would only need access to the pig pen and would be out as soon as pigly possible.

This afternoon, we went back to the house armed with a six-pack of beer and a few new ideas that we heard from the owner at the local market.  We jacked up the front of the trailer so that the rear was closer to the ground and the ramp would be a gentler incline.  We rebuilt the ramp, this time making absolutely sure that it didn’t wobble.  We then – and this was the new trick – spread the pine shavings from the trailer down the ramp to disguise it.  We tried to make it look like the ground just sloped upward into the trailer.

Jaws was still very skeptical.  In fact, he was so disinterested in the whole trailer idea that it took nearly five minutes for me to wake him and get him up and moving around.  I walked over to him in his nest – all the time talking to him as I don’t like to sneak up on a large animal.  He didn’t move.  I bent down next to him and talked some more.  He didn’t move.  I rubbed his lower back (well away from his mouth in case he startled and snapped at me).  He didn’t move.  In fact, I could hear him snore.  I walked around to his face and lifted his ear up to look at his face.  He didn’t move.  I scratched him behind the ear and he slowly came to life, snorting and snuffling as he rolled into an upright position.

I took a grain bucket and walked him toward the trailer.  He stopped just short of the ramp.  J took over with the grain bucket.  He would let Jaws have a little bite from the bucket and then he would slowly move toward the ramp.  We had a couple of false starts but once Jaws had his head in the bucket, we could inch him up the ramp VERY slowly.  I stood motionless near the doorway of the trailer, ready to jump down and shut the trailer door as soon as J gave me the word.

Once we had Jaws all the way in the back of the trailer, J gave me the nod and I lept out of the trailer, swung the door closed, and latched it.  Without the latch, Jaws could just push his way back out of the trailer and I would be sitting on my butt where he dropped me.  Luckily, I am a little faster than a 600 pound pig.  Jaws was unhappy – a fact that we knew as he would rock the trailer and truck while we prepared to leave – but he was loaded and we could take him to his new home and his waiting lady.

At home, we unloaded him without incident into the new pen.  The piglets were free-range and didn’t seem to care that there was a hot wire, but Ruby and Jaws both respected the fence and settled down comfortably in their new digs.  They don’t have a shelter yet – and since we have no trees, that means no shade – but we are making sure that they have a nice wallow and lots of water all the time.

Next project, fence in the goats.

Loading the Pigs, Part One

This morning we planned to load the pigs to move them over to the new house.  I have a small pen ready to go with two lines of hot wire, one about 1 foot off the ground and another about two feet off the ground.  I figure if the pigs get out, we’ll change the way we have the pen set up.  I’m skeptical, but for now, I’m going with the idea that I read about in the Storey Guide that says you can contain pigs with a single strand of hot wire.

Knowing that Jaws does not like to load, I didn’t have high hopes for the morning attempt.  We needed to be in town by nine so we were just going to try for about half an hour and then have to come back later to try again.

J backed the trailer up to the gate and we created a ramp using a couple of posts for support, then a pallet as the ramp, and lastly a plywood board for walking on.  It wasn’t completely stable and I knew that Jaws wasn’t going to trust it the minute he stepped on it and it wobbled.  We used the trailer door as a wall for one side of the chute and then propped a piece of metal sheeting up on the other side of the ramp.  There’s no way that you can keep a pig from pushing through a wall if they want to so this was really meant to act as a visual barrier, not a physical one.

We prepared the pigs for transport by withholding food for the past day.  We made sure that they had water, but wanted them to be good and hungry.  When we had everything set up, we opened the gate to the pen and shook a bucket of grain in front of the ramp.  Everyone was immediately interested.  As they walked closer, we walked up the ramp and into the trailer.  Once in the trailer, we filled the feeding tubs with grain and snuck out the side.  Ruby and the piglets walked up into the trailer without hesitation and began to happily eat.  Jaws stepped up onto the ramp and immediately turned around and walked away.  This isn’t his first rodeo…he paused, looked over his shoulder at the trio eating their grain in the trailer, walked over to his nest, and flopped down. 

Round one was over.  We shut the trailer and the gate.  Ruby and the babies would head to the other house without Jaws.  We’d have to come back for him later.

Moving the Goats

One of the biggest challenges we face when moving to a new house is the fencing.  We don't have the money to buy new fencing for the new house, so we need to reuse the fencing we have.  Unfortunately, livestock won't just stay put if you tear down their fencing to move it.  So, we have to come up with a different solution.

We decided to take a chance with the goats.  The place we are moving to is five acres.  It has a perimeter fence, but it is just four-strand barbed wire - not something that would hold a goat.  But like the chickens, the goats will not travel too far from what they consider home.  So, we moved the goats without building a fence.

It's pretty easy to move goats.  You open the trailer, shake the grain bucket, they jump in, you close the trailer, and you're done.  It was a bit harder with Ares (our wether) this time.  J will dictate the experience to me sometime soon and I will add it.  Suffice it to say, it was not as simple as opening the trailer.

When the goats arrived at the new house, we made sure to feed them near the house, show them the water trough, again, near the house, and fill the hay feeder, yet again, near the house.  Goats are social creatures and would be happiest hanging out with you in the house, so we knew that if they saw us around the house for the day, they would associate that as home.  What we didn't know was how incredibly LOUD a herd of goats can be at night as they run the circuit around the house.  Up onto the back deck - clack, clack, clack - down through the dry pond rocks - clank, clank, clank - up onto the front deck - clack, clack, clack - around the back of the house - maaa, maaa, maaa - and then back up onto the back deck.  Intersperse this with the crazy tongue wagging call of a buck in rut - bleh-ah, bleh-ah, bleh-ah, sneeze - and the occassional goat head peeking in the bedroom window and you get the picture.  By the morning, we were WISHING that the goats would run away.  They have five acres to browse and explore and they spent the entire night within five feet of the house.

We will be building a goat pen as soon as we get settled into the house.  But for now, we may just move their food and water a little further away from the house and hope that they settle into their new surroundings - or we might just have goat for dinner.

Moving the Chickens

We moved the chicken coop over to the new house today.  I don't know how people live without a crane truck!  We just brought the truck over to the house, strapped the coop to the boom, and lifted it up onto the trailer.  Most of the chickens decided that they were not interested in staying in the coop, but two of our broody hens were not going to let a little thing like moving get in the way of their babies.

I was not convinced that it would be safe for these girls to ride in the coop all the way to the new house, so I set up a couple of boxes, filled them with hay, stole their eggs, and set them in the boxes to brood.  We loaded the rest of the trailer with farm equipment and were on our way.  The remaining chickens were a bit unhappy with us taking their house - squawking and cackling the whole time we loaded the trailer and even as we drove out the driveway.

We used the crane truck to set the chicken coop out in the middle of the area we have deemed for livestock.  Again, how do people live without a crane truck?!?!?!  I settled the broody girls back into the nests in the coop and they happily nestled down for the long haul.

We waited until the evening to go back and catch the other chickens.  Once it was dark, we went out to the old pen with a flashlight and several dog crates.  We have found that if you stand the crate up on end, it's easier to drop the chickens into the crate without letting any out.  The chickens may not appreciate it, but we do.

It took about twenty minutes to round up the rest of the flock.  You just walk quietly over to the roosting chickens and reach under them to grasp their legs.  It's best if you catch two at a time.  Quickly pull back so that the chicken drops it's head down and goes into a trance.  Then just drop them into the crate and repeat. When we had them all, we brought them home and set them in the coop for the night.

Update on Zeus

Zeus is still down today, but seems to have more function than yesterday.  He has tried to get up a couple of times.  He is happily drinking all the gatorade we give him.  He is also calm enough to chew his cud - a good sign.  I'd like to see him up and walking, but at least we're heading in the right direction.

Thinking back on the things that could have been the reason behind this, I'm wondering if it has to do with water.  Zeus is in the pen with the pigs.  Ruby CONSTANTLY knocks over her water bucket so that everyone ends up without water.  I make sure to refill it several times during the day, but if Zeus were really thirsty, he might end up drinking out of the pig's mud puddle.  My bet is that there are lots of nasty bugs that could make him feel gross just thriving in that warm puddle of muddy water.  I'm a bit surprised by his lack of movement, but it came on so quickly, and without any change in diet...I really think it must be a bug.

Because we used Corid for the possibiliy of coccy, I am going to give him a dose of LA 200 tonight just to cover our bacterial bases.  If we had used Sulmet for the coccy, we wouldn't need the anti-biodic as Sulmet is a sulfa drug and acts as such.

Sure wish it would cool down a bit.  All the animals (and the people) would be a bit happier if we dropped below 90 F.

Goat in the Mud

When I went out to feed this morning, Zeus was uninterested in his grain.  I noticed scours and he was looking kind of down.

This evening, I went out to feed and he was lying in the mud...something a goat would never do.  Jason and I had to physically move him to a dry area.  He tried to get up, but seemed unable to coordinate his movements and hold up his own weight.

Took his temperature, 101.7.  This is a fever.  We suspect coccy and are treating for that as best we can.  Administered 2 tablespoons of Maloxx orally - to coat stomach and help with digestion.  Administered 6ml of Vitamin B Complex subcutaneously - to stimulate body and encourage digestion.  Administered 30ml of Corid (no Sulmet on hand) orally - to treat coccidiosis.

We will check on him later tonight, but there is little else we can do.  Neptune, our other buck, is continuing to sit vigil by his side, rubbing on his head incessantly (probably annoying Zeus).

ALSO...thought we found a rattlesnake by the feed buckets.  Treated it as such.  It ended up to be a Gopher snake with a really good rattlesnake impression...unfortunately for him, we believed him when he coiled up and "rattled."  We shot him.

Umbilical Hernia

We ended up getting our piglet back from the people who bought him today.  This piglet had an umbilical hernia.  I have always seen this type of hernia correct itself...but this one didn't.

The buyers had the vet come take a look (same vet we use) and he explained that most umbilical hernias are surrounded by fatty tissue and the hernia heals itself.  In this case, the intestines actually erupted through the abdominal wall and as the piglet grows, the hernia grows.  My guess is that it could also cause digestive problems, leading to growth issues, and certainly pain.

We refunded the buyer's money of course, and brought the pig home.  Ruby was VERY concerned as I carried him from the back of the van to the gate.  She knew that this was one of her piglets immediately.  He was welcomed back into the passel.  He was certainly happy to find a mudhole and cool off.

My hope is that we can separate him and his brother Nuts (the hernia brothers) and free choice feed them for a month.  Then we butcher young and use them for a whole hog BBQ...maybe in the ground.  I just want to make sure that we butcher well before there is any pain for these two guys.

On a side note, I looked up the name for a group of pigs and this is what I learned...I kind of like a sounder of swine myself.


A collective noun for a group of pigs:  A drift, drove, litter (young), sounder (of swine), team, passel (of hogs), singular (refers to a group of boars)

Hernias in Piglets

We have two piglets with hernias this time around.  One of them is an umbilical hernia...nothing we really worry about.  The other is a scrotal hernia.  This one has made it impossible to castrate the piglet and thus limits his usefulness as a butcher pig.

I have been doing some research into the causes of hernias and found a good article describing them.  Here is the link.

http://www.thepigsite.com/articles/1/pig-health-and-welfare/2320/hernias-in-growing-pigs

Apparently, hernias are considered part genetic defect, part living condition.  I don't think that our piglets were subjected to specifically dirty conditions, but I did read somewhere that said umbilical hernias tend to happen when piglets are cold and use those abdominal muscles to hunch over for warmth.  This would certainly fit with our piglets as there was not a substantial enough shelter for them and we did not run a heat lamp this year due to the amount of energy it consumed.

The scrotal hernia is less likely to have anything to do with environment.  Interestingly, the article mentions that this usually happens on the left side, and that is the case with our pig...named "Nuts" for obvious reasons.  I hadn't read about scrotal hernias but made an educated guess to abstain from castration because I was concerned that it might complicate things.  It sounds like that was the right choice as scrotal hernias make castration nearly impossible.

We will probably end up keeping Nuts until butcher age.  My best plan is to isolate him (and maybe a buddy) from the big pigs, feed him free choice so that he grows as quickly as possible, and butcher at as young an age as we can.  This will avoid the "taint" that may come with an uncastrated male.  It will also lessen our chances of mortality prior to butcher as he will only have to grow for a few months.  My hope is to get him to a reasonable butcher weight by four or five months of age.  This should be completely do-able.

I will take pictures of the hernias soon and add them to this post so that people can see what a hernia might look like.  It is different than the sub dermal hematomas we see on a regular basis after a piglet has been squished (usually against a wall so the hematoma ends up on a shoulder or hip).

When Pigs Attack

This morning we were faced with the daunting task of catching all of the piglets for sale.  Having done this a few weeks ago for castration, we knew it wouldn't be the easiest thing to do, but I had had some luck baiting them with food so we tried that first.

I poured a pile of food outside of the pens and squatted nearby waiting for the piglets to come to eat.  When they did, I slowly reached over to them and grabbed one by the front leg.  Immediately, I swung it around and grabbed a hind leg.  Remember, these piglets weigh a good 40 pounds and are ALL muscle.  J then grabbed the piglet from me and put it into a cage.

This only worked once.  The piglets figured out way too quickly that they would be caught if they came anywhere near the food.  So we had to try another plan.

We gave Jaws (daddy pig) a bowl of food and tried to sneak up behind the piglets from there.  Jaws doesn't really care if there are squealing piglets around him so we knew we'd be safe with him.  We caught one more that way before the piglets high-tailed it back to the pen with their momma.

Now, we knew that we couldn't go in and catch piglets with Ruby.  She was already very upset that we were chasing her babies - barking and frothing back and forth in her pen.  So we decided to move her into the goat pen so that we could safely catch the babies in her pen.  She moved easily enough with the promise of a nice full bucket of grain.

Once she was out of the pen, we decided to barricade the babies into their shelter.  When they were all in the shelter, we pushed a large table in front of the entry and thus had them contained.  We then sent K and Z inside the shelter to catch babies.  We knew that they wouldn't be able to hold a piglet for long, so we had them yell if they caught one.

Well, Z decided pretty quickly that he was not comfortable in a small shelter with a half dozen upset piglets.  He needed out.  As we let him out, the piglets ran out too.  We were able to catch one more that way before they were all back in with Jaws.

Finally, we blocked a corner behind the chicken coop and ran the piglets into the corner.  J was able to catch two this way, but after he handed the piglet over the fence to me, there was an immediate change of plans.

Up until this point, Ruby had been pretty happy with eating her food.  Maybe it was the sound of two piglets squealing at once.  Whatever it was, the next thing I heard was J yelling that I needed to get in the car (we were loading piglets into a crate in the back of the car).  I glanced over at the goat pen and Ruby was destroying the fence, pushing over two pallets and the milking stand, and making a b-line for me and the squealing baby.

The kids jumped up onto the shelter roof, J climbed up onto anther shelter, I dropped the piglet in the back of the car and climbed into the front seat and closed the door just as Ruby made her way around to me.  She was running, barking, frothing, and generally menacing.  She made her way around the car, and finding no piglets, she moved on to the outdoor crate we had put the other piglets in.

Once she was satisfied that the babies weren't being hurt, she found the duck pool and decided to take a dip.  We had one more piglet to catch, so I handed J a small crate so that he could put the piglet directly into the crate without leaving the relative safety of Jaws' pen.  The minute that piglet squealed, Ruby was at the fence line.  We quickly placed the piglet in the crate and she quieted down.  We were able to load the piglet into the car without incident.

Ruby was still pretty upset, so we gave her some more feed and left the gate open to her pen.  When I looked out about 20 minutes later, she had knocked over the pig grain bucket and was eating to her heart's content.  Honestly, I know she won't eat enough to make herself sick.  And honestly, I'm not willing to go out there and shoo her away from the feed.  I've had enough close encounters of the porcine kind today.

Broody Hens

I have three hens who have decided that they just HAVE to hatch out some babies.  Unfortunately, while I am more than willing to let them do this, they seem to have four-legged snout-nosed invaders breaking a few eggs under them.  This doesn't bode well for any of the eggs as most are now covered with yolk.

As anyone who has ever tried to clean dried egg yolk off of a plate can attest, yolk is a very successful binder.  It's what makes cookies stick together so nicely.  But it also covers the outer shell of another egg nicely.  And it very successfully blocks any oxygen transfer from inside the egg to the outside world.

While I don't understand all of the biology behind it, I do know that an egg will not grow into a chick if the shell is impermeable due to yolk or dirt.  So at this point, I think I have three hens who will be sorely disappointed when their babies do not arrive and I have to convince them to move on with a few days in solitary.

Castrating Pigs *WARNING - GRAPHIC*

We did it.  It took a bit of courage and a few friends, but we did it.

J and I had decided that we were going to castrate the piglets yesterday, but it was clinched when our neighbors volunteered to come over and help.  We already had plans for a barbecue with some other friends, so we pulled out a few more steaks, but another half rack in the fridge, and invited them to join us.

We waited until after everyone had eaten before we started the castration process.  And honestly, the worst part of the whole thing was trying to catch the piglets.  They are a little over a month old now.  My guess is they weigh anywhere from 15 pounds (the runts) to 35 pounds (heavy enough I couldn't lift them over my head and I'm pretty tough). The piglets are able to run under the fence between the two pens, J went into the pen with Ruby and a couple of friends went in the pen with Jaws.  I strategically placed myself outside all of the pens so that I could pull piglets over the fence as they were caught, and because I'm not willing to get in a pen with a 450-pound angry momma pig. J felt a small dose of her anger when she charged him, grabbed his pant leg and ripped a hole in it, before retreating.  Luckily, she didn't grab his leg.  He swears she wasn't going to, but I'm not so sure.

I was surprised that Jaws reacted angrily when the babies squealed, but once we gave Jaws some food, he didn't care what we did with the piglets.  We gathered the piglets in a 4x4 crate, catching boys and girls alike just for ease of capture. Once we had caught all of the piglets, we let the girls go so Ruby would calm down.

There was one little boy (we called him "Nuts") that had a large protrusion near his testicles.  From a distance I had assumed it was a hematoma (a pooling of blood under the skin from an injury), but upon closer inspection, I decided it was more likely a fairly large hernia.  Because of the proximity to the testicles, I decided not to castrate this piglet today.  While it will be harder on everyone when the piglet is larger, I would rather see the hernia healed than accidentally open the skin and have the hernia truly external.

Finding the right spot.

Before we began, I lined up our supplies.  I had a bottle of iodine, an aerosol can of BluKote, and a scalpel.  Both the vet and the guy at the feed store had assured me that I could use the scalpel for several piglets as long as I disinfected between piglets.  In my opinion, this did not hold true.  The first piglet was easy to cut, but by the third piglet, I felt that I had to use way too much pressure to achieve the same goal.  In the future, I would buy a scalpel for each piglet and discard after one use.

Making the first incision.

Pushing the teste out.  Cut through this membrane.

We had three guys hold the piglets, although I think you could easily do it with two holding and one cutting, and if you had to, you could get away with only one holding.  One guy held the snout so that the piglet didn't scream.  This was more for our comfort as piglets are VERY loud when they want to be.  The second guy secured the front legs.  The third (J did this part) held the hind legs.  Initially, he held them towards the back so that I could find the testes, and then while I held my finger in front of them, he pushed the hind legs forward and slightly out, tightening the skin over the testes.  The piglet was very successfully immobilized this way.

I first poured a generous amount of iodine over the entire area (and myself).  I made a small incision from front to back over the teste.  Then a second incision through the membrane that holds the teste.  I knew that I was through the membrane when a clear fluid squirted out - I think this is what the teste is surrounded by.  Gently, I coaxed the test out of the incision.

The cord is thick. 

I cut away any remaining membrane and then began to cut the cord.  I was told to "shave" the cord so that the cut is not flat.  This part seemed to be the most painful for the piglet and while I tried to do it quickly, it was not a quick process (at least it didn't feel like it to me and I'm sure it didn't feel like it to the piglet).  I know that some people just pull the teste out and the cord breaks, but I was concerned that whatever the cord is attached to on the inside might be injured that way.

Shave it quickly, but don't cut bluntly.

After the first teste, I made an identical incision over the second one and repeated the process.  When both testicles were removed, I grabbed the BluKote and gave the whole area an ample dose.  I also managed to get most of J's hands (which will be blue for a few days now).  Once the piglet was sprayed, we quickly gave him back to his momma.

The whole process of extraction took less than five minutes per piglet.  Honestly, the hardest part was catching the little buggers. 

If you're reading this because you're trying to decide whether or not you can do it yourself, you can.  It really wasn't as bad as I anticipated.  And today, the boys are just as rambunctious and happy as ever - even if their booties are a little swollen and sore.   K took some amazing photos of the whole process and when I find the mini-USB cable, I'll add them to the post for those looking for images.

Castrating Piglets

We have put this off way too long and now we are facing the very unpleasant task of castrating much larger piglets.  I watched the dr do this last season, but have never done it myself.  I did find a couple of you tube videos.  The following one is the best so far.  Please understand that you will be seeing someone make an incision on a piglet and removing the testes.  It is not terribly bloody, but it is not for the faint of heart.  I will write more about our experiences after we have actually done it...hopefully by the end of today.

Sold Stitch and Apollo

Apollo, day one.

Lilo's daughter Stitch, and her son Apollo have gone to a new home.  Sometimes with herd management, you have to make decisions based on the big picture and not on the individual animal.  This was one of those times.

Stitch was a first time mommy this spring.  Because of that, I cut her some slack when she abandoned Mary.  But a few other factors made me decide to get rid of her.

First, Stitch is a meat goat.  She serves a single purpose when alive - to create more meat goats.  In contrast, my milking does create meat babies AND milk.  Dual purpose is better.

Second, when Stitch came into milk, it was apparent that her teats were positioned such that she had to move her leg to allow her babies to nurse.  This isn't awful, but it makes it harder for the babies.  There is no reason to keep a doe that has this challenge when there are lots to take her place.

Third, Stitch hasn't been the most attentive mom.  Sure, she's a teenager and most teen moms are not very doting, but some are.  And if I'm going to keep a single purpose doe, she's going to need to be a great mom.

Fourth, and this was only because of the first three, she abandoned her baby.  Now, this may be because it was her first kidding.  She may go on to have twins and never leave their side.  But it's not worth the risk...again because she is single purpose.

So, Stitch and Apollo have gone off to a nice family farm where little kids will get to enjoy them.  Farewell, you two.

Bottle Babies

Well, we have three bottle babies on the farm at the moment - actually two bottle babies and one bucket baby.

The first baby was rejected by her momma, something that happens every once in awhile.  This time it was our young mother, Stitch.  She delivered two babies, but abandoned one within minutes of birth.  The doeling, named Mary, was out in the corner of the pen, shivering and alone.  The buckling, named Apollo, was with Stitch.  We actually thought she had only delivered one baby until M noticed the other one.

I tried for several hours to get Stitch to accept her baby, but after forcing her to let Mary nurse a few times, it was obvious that she was not going to take care of the doeling.  So we brought her inside and began the task of bottle-feeding.

The second baby came from our good friend over the mountains.  She had a doe with triplets and was bottle-feeding one...but she wasn't home enough to feed three times a day.  She knew that I was, so we met in the middle and she gave me the doeling.  The biggest benefit to having more than one bottle baby is that you can leave them outside at night instead of in the bathroom...and that's a big benefit.

The third baby is not a goat.  He is a piglet.  He is one of two very small piglets in the litter.  I decided to supplement his feedings to help him in the first few months of life.  He probably wouldn't have made it if I hadn't.

We started Grunt, the piglet, with a bottle.  But for some reason, this little guy could not figure out how to suck on the nipple.  Instead, he would chew on it.  It achieved a similar effect, but with a lot more mess.  So a friend suggested a bowl.  It took a few tries, but Grunt now happily drinks his milk from a bowl three times a day.

The funnest (and sometimes most annoying) part about having bottle babies is the bond that they have with humans.  We cannot go outside without hearing them call to us.  At the moment, they are small enough that all three can wiggle their way through the fence and over to us.  It's pretty cute watching two doelings and a piglet run from the pens to the house.  It's not so cute when you don't intend to feed them at the moment.  We sneak out a lot if we're leaving close to a feeding time.

Ninja Goats

I knew that the time would come eventually when the goats would realize that my fence was not in fact goat-proof.  That day was today.

When I came out this morning, Asha and Lilo were wandering around outside of the pen.  They had obviously had some of the grain out of the grain buckets, but it didn't look like they had eaten a ton.  Phew.  Just what I need...a couple of bloated goats.  I put them back and Lilo seemed quite relieved to be able to let Ares nurse her out a bit.  She was very full.

I tried to restretch the fence but I knew that this was only the beginning.

This afternoon, I came out to feed and WHILE I WAS SCOOPING THE GRAIN I watched first Asha, then Lilo make the most amazing ninja moves over the fence. Bear in mind that Asha is due to kid any day.  First Asha stretched her front legs up as far as she could on the fence to get a good footing.   Then, in one fluid motion, she jumped onto those front legs, swung the hind legs to the side, rolled onto her back (allowing her front legs to slide out of the now-sagging fence) and stood up.  I could've sworn she smiled at me when she glanced over her shoulder at Lilo.  Lilo made a graceful leap over the bent fenceline without a scratch on her.  They both headed right toward me...and the grain.

It is VERY hard to keep a goat out of a grain bucket if it is open.  I had taken the lids off of all three buckets as I was scooping grain for the pigs, the goats, and the chickens.  I didn't have time to get all three lids resecured (my goats know how to pry open the lids if they aren't tied down).  I did my best to put all of the lids on, all the while kicking my legs, flailing my arms, and screaming obscenities at these two ruminent rebels.  I eventually abandoned the buckets and lured the girls back through the gate with a scoop of grain.  They may be ninjas, but Country Buffet Blend is their weakness.

Knowing that they would be over the fence the minute they were finished with their grain, I had to act fast.  I grabbed a pallet and wedged it into the sagging section of fence.  I dragged the milking stand in front of the pallet and then shoved the whole thing as far into the perimeter of the pen as I could, thus tightening the fenceline.  But this was just temporary.  And I was mad enough to fix it right just for the pleasure of frustrating Asha and Lilo in their next attempts.

I grabbed a roll of black and white six string hot wire and tied it to one of the post cap insulators on the pen.  From there, I began unwinding it around the pen.  I started so that the hot wire would stretch across the weakened spot first.  By the time I was half way down the second side of the pen, Lilo and Asha were belly-aching...having finished their grain and realized that their escape route was being permanently blocked.  They followed me around the perimeter, all the time talking to me, as if their pleas would somehow convince me that they didn't need a hot wire at all and that this was all just a misunderstanding.

I finished the fenceline and tied the ends together creating a loop.  By now, Lilo and Asha had given up and were eating hay.  They knew that their plan to assuage my fears of another escape had failed.  I walked into the pig pen, turned off the fence charger, tied the two lines together with a small section of wire across the corridor between the two pens, and turned the charger back on.  The needle pinned itself in the green.  I think I heard Lilo sigh and Asha curse under her breath.

Runts

One of the most challenging and most amazing things about piglets is how fast they grow.  On the first day, our piglets couldn't have been more than two pounds a piece.  Today, only eleven days later, they have easily doubled their size.  Well, most of them have.  And this is where the challenge lies.

There are always runts in the litter...one or two babies that are smaller at birth or were injured early on and didn't get as much to eat.  These piglets struggle to keep up and as their siblings pack on the pounds, their battle gets that much more difficult.

I have two piglets that are runts in this litter.  The first one I have named Sprout.  She is the one that I wrote about a few days ago with a cut on her leg.  This cut made it harder for her to push her way in to nurse and meant that she missed out on several feedings.  When you are growing as fast as these guys are, every meal counts.

The second one I have named Grunt.  He is just small.  When I go out to check on him, I often find him almost asleep standing up.  His snout has fallen just far enough to touch the ground allowing his head to balance as if on a tripod.  His little body is wrinkled and the word "scrawny" comes to mind almost immediately.  He is a sad little guy who does his best to fight for a snack, but is edged out by his bigger siblings and is falling further and further behind.

Today I decided to try to give Grunt some extra fortification via bottle.  He didn't fight me too much when I picked him up, but he did squeal enough to let Ruby know I had him.  I quickly retreated with him to the house.

He seemed to do ok with the bottle.  At first he wanted nothing to do with it.  While I was obviously not his favorite person, he kept trying to snuggle up under my chin for warmth and protection.  I had to pry his mouth open with my fingers and then stick the nipple into the side of his cheek to get him started.  He never actually sucked on the bottle, it was more of a chewing behavior...kind of like Little Plow.  I guess that this must be how piglets nurse on their mommas.

He did eventually allow the bottle to go into his mouth without force.  He seemed to like it best if I had my face right next to his snout...almost like the skin to skin contact was necessary for nursing.  At one point, he was rooting around for the nipple and bit my nose.  By the end, we were both covered in milk but I think he got a few ounces into his belly.

I took him back out to Ruby and he immediately snuggled up with her.  He was obviously still hungry though, because the minute Ruby grunted the dinner grunt, he was in there fighting for a plate.

I think that I will continue to work with him and Sprout.  I would like to see them growing better than they are.  And while I want them to stay out with Ruby because that is the best way for them to grow up, I will work with both of them on bottle-feeding so that we can supplement their diets for awhile.

Injured Piglet

I try to check on the piglets several times a day so that I can head off anything at the first sign of trouble.  Yesterday morning there was one piglet - a very small one - who seemed to be limping quite badly on her hind leg.  I picked her up and found two deep lacerations with an open flap of skin between them on her lower leg.  It was warm and swollen, quite obviously infected.

I brought her in the house.  It is nearly impossible to do anything near the pen with a piglet as they cry for Ruby and she gets very upset.  Once they are out of earshot, the piglet can cry and momma is fine.  I washed out the cut as best I could with Dr. Bronner's soap.  The piglet hated it.  I didn't like it much either.  Once clean, I filled the lacerations with triple antibiodic ointment, cut a small piece of vet wrap, and wrapped the leg so that she would still have full range of motion.

Last year, we had a piglet get injured in a similar fashion.  We suppose that this cut is caused when momma accidentally steps on the piglet's leg and her hoof cuts the tender skin.  Last year, I did just what I said above and then I put the baby back out with Ruby.  Last year, that piglet was dead in the morning.

So this year, I followed up the cleaning and bandaging with the tiniest dose of LA 200.  Literally, I gave her 0.1mL of it via IM injection.  Her little body couldn't be more than two pounds and the dosage was so small I had a hard time feeling like I had administered it at all.  But it must've done something.

This morning, she seemed to be putting weight on her leg.  And by this evening, she had gotten the bandage off (always happens) and was walking on it without a problem.  The cut is still visible, but the swelling has subsided and she seems to be doing fine.  Lesson learned.

Another One Down

I should've known that Little Plow wouldn't be strong enough to make it through a night outside with momma.  Maybe I did but I was tired.  I knew that he would have to be on his game to make sure that he didn't end up crushed under Ruby when she went to bed.

When I came out to feed him this morning, he had passed.  His little body was buried under some of the straw bedding.  Without much pomp and circumstance, I tossed his little body as far out into the juniper and sage as I could.  My hope is that the coyotes will find him before the dogs.

Now there are ten piglets.

Surrogate Momma

Well, when we checked on the piglet last evening, we found that he was in with daddy.  He seems to be drawn to any grunting noise, regardless of the caller.  Since daddy really isn't going to provide this little guy with much nourishment, I brought him back inside to bottle feed.

We supplemented a couple of piglets last year that weren't growing as quickly as the rest, but this one is different.  I cannot seem to get him to suck on the nipple at all.  He chomps on it.  He chews on it.  He fights for it.  He definitely is getting milk into his belly, but it is an inefficient (and messy) system he has worked out.  When he is hungry, he smacks his lips together like a packman looking for dots.  It's hilarious.

J went to bed early so I decided to snuggle the piglet awhile and get him settled for bed in a small cardboard box.  He would not hear of it...or rather, I would not have heard the end of it from him if I had abandoned him in the box.  I thought about going out and grabbing a couple more piglets from momma, but I really didn't feel like going outside again in the dark.  So I did what any pig farmer would do, I wrapped him up in a blanket and snuggled him into our bed with me.

Just like any kid sleeping in their parent's bed, he probably was doing just fine - getting lots of rest.  I, on the other hand, was constantly waking up to adjust him or listen to him.  He found a nice little spot under my chin and fell asleep for awhile.  I thought we might just have it worked out when he decided that he needed to walk around a bit.

He was next to my head on my pillow...actually in my hair, when I felt this warmth radiating from the fabric below him.  HE PEED ON MY HEAD!!!!  That was it.  It was 2:30 in the morning and I needed some uninterrupted sleep.  I put him in the box next to the bed and put in my iPod earbuds.  I turned on some white noise and fell happily asleep.  I don't know if he made noise or not.  But he was alive and well this morning.

I fed him several times before finally taking him out to momma.  I wanted to wait until it was warm outside so that even if he wandered off, he would be ok.  The boys checked on him a few times throughout the afternoon.  I went out about once an hour (half as much as I should have been) and wrestled some milk into his chompy mouth.

I watched him several times try to get in to nurse when Ruby let the babies.  But I never actually saw him make contact with a nipple.  I'm encouraged that he was willing to get in there and try.  I will obviously be supplementing him (most likely until weaning age) but I like the idea that he may eventually get momma's milk too.

He is outside with momma tonight.  It is peaceful in here without the little grunt.  I only hope he stays snuggled up with his family.  We'll see in the morning.

24: Pig Style

Sunday
2:00pm
R comes home to find J snuggling with a piglet (something he doesn't do without cause).  Turns out that this piglet was found in a mud puddle made by his momma when she dumped her water over to cool down.  The piglet is ver cool to the touch and basically unresponsive.

3:00pm
R settles into her own snuggle, holding the piglet skin to skin in a "kangaroo care" fashion.  She starts to call friends for advice.  One person suggests she simply let the piglet die.  :-(

4:00pm
R mixes up some gatorade and feeds the baby via syringe drench.  There's not much response.

5:00pm
R passes the snuggle piglet off to K and goes out to make some kind of shelter for Ruby and the piglets as she is not in the right pen and has no shelter.  It begins to thunder, lightening, and rain.

6:00pm
R's friend comes out to help with the shelter.  They fashion something with a table and a tarp that Ruby seems to be ok with.  The plug in a heat lamp, even though it means 300watts of energy per hour!

7:00pm
R decides to try a warm water bath with the piglet.  It seems to help.  She dries the piglet off and gives her more oral electrolytes.

8:00pm
The boys head to bed and R settles in with the piglet, a hot water bottle, and a good book...prepared for the long haul.

9:00pm
J gets home from work and decides to go out to check on the piglets and the shelter.  He comes back inside with a second piglet, very cold and shaking.  R begins the same process with this little piglet, warming him in a warm water bath.  He begins to sieze.  She doesn't hold a lot of hope.  J decides to bring all of the piglets inside for the night to make sure that they stay warm enough.

10:00pm
J brings the piglets inside but we're missing two.  He goes back out to check for them and finds them crushed under the table, very cold.  We put the healthy eleven into a dog crate lined with straw and snuggle the other two into a few blankets and the hot water bottle, and R heads to bed.

11:00pm
J removes the hot water bottle and goes to bed.

12:00pm
R checks on the babies.  All fine.

1:00am
R checks on the babies.  She snuggles the two back into their blankets.

2:00am
R checks on the babies.  All fine.

3:00am
R checks on the babies.  Some grouching from the crate, but all are fine.

4:00am
J checks on the babies.  The two chilly ones don't look good.

5:00am
R checks on the babies.  The two chilly ones are dead.  Everyone else is fine.

6:00am
R begins to move the babies into a laundry basket to take them out to momma.  She finds the bottom piglet unresponsive.  It is warm but she suspects asfixiation.  She wraps the baby up in a blanket.

7:00am
R takes the piglets back out to their momma in the laundry basket and they happily greet and start snacking.

8:00am
R returns with the piglet in hand from dropping the kids off at school to meet the mobile slaughter truck.  It's here for Freightliner and Oreo.

9:00am
R goes inside to feed the piglet.  He actually takes some milk from the bottle.

10:00am
R and the piglet snuggle.

11:00am
R and the piglet prepare to head into school to man the book fair.

12:00pm
R and the piglet are told that they cannot stay at the school together.  She decides to put the piglet in the car during the fair...it's nice and warm but not too warm for the piggie.

1:00pm
R checks on the piglet in the car.  She feeds the baby a bit of milk and goes back to the fair.

2:00pm
R and the kids head home with the piglet.  R and J manage to move Ruby and Jaws into opposite pens so that Ruby will have her own shelter.  R takes the piglet out to his momma.  He seems to be doing ok with the other piglets but is a bit confused about who his momma is.  We'll continue to check on him throughout the afternoon to make sure he's ok.  But it looks like he'll do fine.

One Piglet Lost to An Umbilical Hernia

I found a dead piglet this afternoon.  I had noticed yesterday that there was a piglet showing signs of a small hernia near the umbilicus.  Ruby was nosing him to see if he would move, but he was already gone.

I did a little more research into why naval hernias occur and this is what I found.

Of many congenital abnormalities, ruptures at the umbilicus or the inguinal canal are most common. They are considered to be developmental defects yet have a very low heritability. Umbilical hernias can sometimes be traced back to a particular boar in which case he should be culled. Environmental factors can increase the incidence of umbilical hernias and if there is a problem (more than 2% of pigs) consider the following:

• Are prostaglandins used to synchronise farrowings. If so check that piglets are not being pulled away from the sow at farrowing and the cord stretched abnormally.
• Is navel bleeding occurring on the farm? Are naval clips being used to prevent bleeding? If so make sure they are not placed close up to the skin otherwise the tissues will be damaged and weakened.
• Identify the precise time when the ruptures appear. Do these coincide with a change of housing.
• In veranda type housing where the pigs pass through a small hole to the dunging area sudden severe abdominal pressure may cause ruptures.
• Are stocking densities high and increase abdominal pressure?
• In cold weather do the pigs huddle thereby increasing abdominal pressure.
• Check records to see if the boar and the sow are related.
• If the rupture is large and the pig is on a concrete floor or slats it should be moved to a soft bedded area so that the overlying skin does not become sore and ulcerated.
• Examine navels at births and two days later to see if there are any abnormalities.

Inguinal ruptures are not as important a problem unless they become very large.

                                                                         - from www.thepigsite.com

In consideration of the above information, there are two things that come to mind.  The first is that I had some trouble with the umbilical cord bleeding on a few piglets.  I'm not sure what determines how the umbilicus breaks, but when I cut them I make sure to leave about two inches of the cord so that the bleeding stops quickly.  I only cut umbilical cords if they are super long and causing trouble...like the piglet is tripping on it or getting tangled with others.  I wonder if the cord would naturally tear off at the skin level if ripped away with force instead of being cut.  That might be why I had a few very short cords and some bleeding.

The second factor that might be a factor is the cold.  I'm not sure what they consider "cold" but our piglets are living without a heat lamp at night and that would be pretty chilly for any piglet as they prefer upwards of 90 degrees.  This piglet could have died in the night.

The hernia had completely ruptured though...I don't know if that might have happened with a crush injury, something that could easily have happened.  Ruby is such a great momma but she is so big and those babies are so little.

So far, the final fifteen seem to be doing well.  I still think that I will need to pull at least four of them and bottle feed just to give the others a better chance with nursing.  Having twelve teats and fifteen babies means somebody is always missing out.  I'd rather drop it down to have a few extra teats.  I will watch the babies for a few more days and decide who looks like they need the most help...and then supplement them with bottles.  They will continue to live with momma and their siblings, but I will feed them in addition to them having access to nurse if they want.

Eprinex Take Two

This note is more for me than anyone...I dosed the goats for their second time with Eprinex.  It has been exactly fourteen days from the last dose so we should be getting any lice that hatched between the first dose and now.  It was a bit tricky to get the meds onto Ares, our buckling.  He is definitely a dam-raised buckling and is shy of any attention from humans.  It makes it harder to treat him, but with the help of the kids (two-legged type), we got it done.

The does are fat and heavy with babies now.  I can see that Asha's udder is starting to fill in and I think it will be a beautiful udder when she is fully freshened.  Stitch and Tumbleweed (who are both more Boer than milker) also have nice looking udders.  I think I might try to shave them tomorrow as Stitch in particular has some very long hair.  It makes it so much easier to clean up after the birth if they are shaved.

What To Do With Day Old Piglets

The first item on our agenda after the babies were born today was to trim up the umbilical cords and check the babies over for any obvious problems.  Once that was done, I spent a lot of time just helping the babies to find a teat and get some milk in them.  This was tricky for us as Ruby only has twelve working teats and sixteen working babies.  It means that there will always be a couple of piglets without something to eat.  Today that isn't much of a problem because the babies are so tired from the birth that half of them are asleep at a time.  They might be walking and then they are asleep.  It's like a war zone with little sleeping piglets strewn all over the place.  The piglet in the picture was walking over her brother when a snooze caught her.

After giving the babies some time to eat and sleep, we made sure that Ruby had food and water.  She was pretty warm in the sun so I gently wet her down with water from a bucket.  It wasn't enough and she had to go lie down in a mud puddle - not the best idea with a bunch of babies following you, but she did it and everyone survived.

It is SO much easier to handle the babies on the first day.  The momma is tired so she doesn't react very much to a squealing baby.  The babies are tired so they often fall asleep in your hands when you pick them up.  These two things mean that it's best to address needle teeth and iron supplements on day one.

Last year I described how to clip needle teeth.  But it's pretty easy.  There are eight teeth altogether and the only reason you clip them is to avoid piglets injuring each other or their momma.  We used nail clippers and just cut the tips off each tooth to make them flat.  The teeth have an odd brownish tint to them that makes me think they may be dying the minute the baby is born.  They do bleed, however, so they must still be partially alive.

When the needle teeth are clipped, J and I give the babies 2ml of iron supplement orally.  I bought the injectable kind this year, but was afraid that there wasn't enough "M" (muscle) to give the shot "IM" (intramuscular).  These babies are a bit on the small size...probably due to how many Ruby was carrying and the fact that we didn't have her on a free-choice diet because she was sharing her pen with other pigs.

The babies don't like the taste of the iron...at least they don't look like they like it.  You have to be careful not to push it in too quickly and allow the baby to aspirate the liquid.  I found that if I divided the dose into four small pushes, we could get most of it to stay in the baby and not end up on our hands.

An added benefit to doing the oral iron supplement at the same time as needle teeth is that you have a visual marker of who still needs to be done.  The babies do not like to stay in one place for very long and no matter how effecient we were, we never really knew if we had a new piglet in our hands until we saw the orange foam around their mouth.

Goose Is In Solitary

I got tired of having to reach under our broody goose to retrieve chicken eggs so tonight we put her in a wire cage with food and water.  She is NOT pleased with her new accomodations and has threatened to complain to upper management if it is not rectified quickly.  Unfortunately for her, upper management is in my pocket.  She's stuck for the next few days.

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.