This is Life on the Farm and Change is in the Air

Reader Contribution by Julia Shewchuk

This was supposed to be, again, Part 2, Fencing and Pasture, of “How to become a Dairy Goat Farmer.” It will not be. Welcome to Life on A Farm – This is Life. Being a small family farmer is not for the faint hearted. Let me bring you up to speed where we are.

Baby Season: Kids, Puppies, Calves

I wrote the last blog on February 25th. That same day we had two does give birth. The first one gave birth to Nubian quadruplets, all healthy and growing, and the second one gave birth to Saanen twins, also all healthy and growing. Then, in the afternoon, a calf was born to one of our Black Angus cows. Then, a little bit later, our Livestock Guardian Dog Athena, decided to give birth as well. She is a bit stand-offish and we had been trying to figure out how to get her into the stall and puppy birthing pool when the time came, but she went in there all on her own. Good girl. Within two hours we had seven healthy puppies. She was licking them, cleaning them and moving around very carefully. We gave her some broth, which she gratefully accepted. We were very happy with seven healthy puppies. At 9:30p, during bed check, she had a contraction and, much to our surprise, out slid number eight. OK, eight puppies. Super. We went to bed. All was quiet. The next morning there were twelve!!!!

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