Spring is slowly creeping up and there are babies everywhere on the farm!
I was a little worried going into this new year. Over the first two months we had a sow due, all of our cows and of course myself. I was really hoping that the babies would not all come at the same time!
It ended up working fabulously.
Lady, the sow had her litter towards the end of January. Unlike our other farrowings on the farm, this one went excellently!
She farrowed over the daytime, on Matt's weekend, on the warmest weekend I think I have seen in January!
The were 14 all together, blacks, pinks and reds with spots.
We ended up loosing a few of the weaker ones and a couple to injury in the first few days, but we were kind of expecting that. Its always hard, but we were pretty satisfied with 10 vigorous piglets!
Who would have thought it would be this warm in the barn in January! It was a great time for piglets to come!
They have been growing super fast, we have weaned the biggest ones off of mom and the little farmers and I are starting to tame them up. They are so cute and frisky that its not a chore in the least!
This baby is growing well too.
This picture and the next were taken by little farm girl when we went out to grain the horses one afternoon.
For fun we were asking them to sit down onto a hay bale. Tansy has actually sat down on her rump on the hay with her hind feet sticking up in the air, which is pretty fun, and a little silly. Little farm girl took this one from way up on the hay pile in the barn.
And of course, the newest farm boy made his appearance as well! He is growing very well and has been a joy for the whole family!
He is keeping me pretty busy so there may not be too many blog posts for a while!
And we have been excitedly anticipating our very first calving on the farm. It was thrilling this morning to go out and find our first two babies!
It was quite an adventure and a bit of a learning curve. The first was born in the shelter that Matt had bedded thickly with hay, and was up and vigorous. The second was born in a bowl in the snow and was shivering in a puddle. Matt pulled it out and bedded it with hay before he went to work. I spent the morning checking it, pulling it back out of the hole, rubbing and drying it, trying to fill the hole thickly enough that when the calf floundered back in he would stay dry. Hours and hours passed and she calf was still shivery and unable to stand.
It was hard to decide what needed to be done as we haven't done this before. The mother cow is our very most wild and thankfully allowed us to handle the calf, but there was no chance of getting near her or confining her in anyway to get some colostrum.
As the day wore on and the calf didn't show any sign of strengthening or getting up, we decided that we should probably intervene. We ended up mixing up some powdered colostrum and feeding the little guy from a bottle. He sucked well and within 20 minutes was on his feet and following his dam, and this afternoon has been nursing on her happily.
2 down, 14 more to go!
