Babies on the Homestead

It’s been a year of babies, and as we come up on our second daughter’s first birthday, it’s a good time to reflect.

Our second child arrived two and a half weeks early this time last year. The pregnancy had been a humbling experience. Thankfully, she was healthy as a horse as was I, but because of the way she was positioned, I was couch-ridden for the majority of the 10 months. It was an opportune time to take up crochet and embroidery and to get closer to God, and looking back, I am grateful for the season of forced rest and slowing down.

Arthur and I tend to be “go-getter” type people. We like pockets of rest, but we have many irons in the fire going at all times. We don’t know how to do life any other way, but this slowing down was a blessing.

I wasn’t the only one who would add to the farm this year though. We put our goat buck in with our does last Spring. Ginger and Chippy, both being Nubians, have always been close so they bred pretty quickly. Pickles on the other hand avoided Chippy’s advances for months. She was quick. He’d chase her, licking his lips, and trying to point and shoot only to have her dart off at the last minute. She was impressive, but he did finally succeed. So, come late Fall/early Winter, we were on goat baby watch. We didn’t know the exact date, but we knew via ultrasound that Ginger had at least three and Pickles had a least one.

What we didn’t expect was Mama Jane, our potbelly pig, to give birth the week before Christmas… to her son’s babies. Definitely not planned and pretty much rocked our lives all of December. We had neutered Diggory Delvet, we thought in time, but apparently, unbeknownst to us, male pigs are fertile up to 45 days after castration. So… there was some inbreeding going on that we weren’t aware of, and it worked. Much to our surprise, Mama Jane gave birth to eight piglets. One was stillborn. One was malformed and died after we tried to nurse him for two days. We think Mama Jane accidentally killed one two days after birth, so we were left with five. Five line bred piglets. We already have Mama Jane and her original three babies, so there was no way we were keeping five more potbelly pigs. I quickly jumped feet first back onto social media to find them homes, and it worked. Within a day, all five were placed. We were just awaiting pick-up.

It was a mental roadblock to decide to become active on platforms that continue to censure and bully people. I’ve stayed on the ‘book’ to sell our eggs locally because no other platform has that type of reach on a local level. Getting back onto the “gram” too was a real nosedive. Both platforms are overflooded with content, and any content you make has a lifespan of like 10 minutes. It’s night and day to the social media world I entered in 2014 when I started my social media marketing business and one I don’t have much desire to play in. But, it has its purposes.

Four out of the five piglets were set to be under the Christmas tree on Christmas morning. It was the perfect time to find them homes. One, the runt, was set to go live on a farm. We never would have pulled them from mama that early, but Mama Jane had gotten deathly ill with some type of pp infection three days after their birth. She quit lactating, and we had to pull them while we tried to save her. Thankfully, a round of steroids and antibiotics did the trick, and Mama Jane lives on. The little runt was returned just two days after going to her new home. Her name is Cora, and because we are absolute saps, she is our pet pig now. I’ve wanted many pets in my life, but a pet pig has never been top of the list. I know many people do it, but I have never been keen. They’re funny little creatures and incredibly strong. Arthur, my husband, has apparently always wanted a pet pig so little Cora was here to stay. She is precious and destructive. She wore out her welcome in the house at about eight weeks though she still comes in to play with the kittens.

Oh! The kittens! Arthur also happened upon three kittens this year, but we only kept two. Merle and Earl have blasted into our home with so much chaos. Boy cats are balls of energy and fun, and our eldest daughter has had two constant play companions since June of last year. Cora and the boys like to play tag. It’s adorable, but they definitely use their climbing advantage to win/cheat.

We were on Ginger baby watch for about 2.5 weeks at the beginning of December. It felt like forever. She started contracting and then couldn’t stand leading up to the birth. We thought maybe the babies were pushing on her nerves and that she’d be able to stand when the pressure was off after birth, but that wasn’t the case. She had FOUR babies. Two got stuck together in the birth canal, and we had to do some finnagling. We’ve never birthed animals on our farm, and it was a lesson by fire to figure out how to maneuver their little bodies out. The last was breach but skinny so thankfully slid out with a slight pull. And then the real drama happened. Ginger couldn’t care less about them. Her labor had been so long and hard. She was exhausted and wouldn’t even look at them. She still couldn’t stand. It was late in the night, and we didn’t have powdered colostrum because our daughter had stolen it and fed it to the big goats. The babies were hungry and starting to cry out, so we took turns all through the night rolling Ginger on her side and force-feeding the babies. We used a syringe for a while and milked out colostrum ourselves, but the babies were way more efficient than we were getting how much they needed. It was a doozy. Then Ginger didn’t pass the afterbirth. One thing after another. She was at risk for an infection. Everything tells you to NEVER pull the placenta to get it out because it can break in there, but she still wasn’t accepting her babies and time was ticking by. We pulled out some pieces and wrapped them all over the four babies. They were placenta necklaces, and the trick worked! The goat farmer where we got the goats originally was so kind to take my frantic facebook messages and told me to use the birthing sacks and goop, but it had been almost two days so we had to improvise. Thank goodness she passed the afterbirth a few days later without infection. We definitely don’t recommend the route we had to take, but we’re so glad it worked. Hand rearing a litter of piglets and four goat kids at the same time did not sound fun. We sold the boy Nubian kid to a local farm and named the girls, Rosemary, Lulu, & Brie. It was a Christmas to remember.

About a month later. Pickles finally had her babies, two beautiful little white Saanen/Nubian crosses. Alfredo & Parma, a boy and a girl. We’re keeping and weathering this little boy since he’s a cross. Pickles is the perfect mama. She birthed the first one with complete ease. When we found her a few minutes after birth, she was licking her clean and cooing to her. Alfredo was breech so we helped him get out. Pickles adores her babies. She cleaned them up and was up on her feet trying to get them to nurse within about an hour. It was amazing to watch nature do its thing without much interference.

Our daughter has had quite the lesson in babies this year. She put together that people are animals and must “smush” like mammals do to make babies. We didn’t go much into the topic when she had her revelation but did say that other mommies and daddies probably haven’t told their four-year-olds how babies are made yet and to please keep the information to herself.

We don’t anticipate any babies on the farm this year unless we find a dairy calf. We have to figure out how to milk these goats and learn if we even like goat’s milk! We only got the goats because we were having such a hard time finding a dairy cow in our area, but we’re excited about the cheese-making and more in our future. Babies on the homestead bring a renewal of life and blessings. It sure was a fun year.