Often times when you see your favorite farms, homesteads, and other small businesses on social media, you see the good side. The ugly side is often glossed over, so most of the time you aren't seeing the struggles. We have had a week filled with both, and that has unfortunately put us a little behind on orders. I usually don't go into detail about what happens on the bad days, but I want to talk about it tonight because I had to reach out to many of you to delay orders because of the not so pretty side of life. Most of our customers were completely understanding, but I dealt with some pretty nasty messages from 2 customers in particular.
Let's start with the good. Last week our first chicks of the season hatched, so I was on a bit of an excitement high. We had a 91% hatch rate with only 2 eggs not being viable. The chicks went into what we call the pre-brooder, the smaller brooder in the office where I can keep an eye on them for the first week to make sure everyone is growing great, and I got to spend the next few days listening to happy little chirps as I worked on orders.
Then Saturday arrived, and the sad reality of what can go wrong on the farm came with it. We have a mini pig Kune Kune cross, Sweetheart, who was due to farrow (give birth) around Feb 8. 10 days later, she had all the signs, but no babies. I assumed I had just calculated the date wrong or she was bred a little later than I thought, so I wasn't too worried. When I checked on her Saturday night, she looked to be really close to laboring, so I excitedly told Ben to expect we might have piglets by morning.
And that's where everything started to go wrong.
At 4am Sunday morning I awoke to our 10 year old yelling for me. The brooder light on the chicks blew and thankfully their loud chirping woke her up. I stumbled around to find my other bulbs and replaced it as quickly as I could...only to have it blow again almost immediately.
Just great.
The lamp was malfunctioning, and that was my last bulb. I spent the next few hours warming water bottles to keep my chicks from freezing to death until Tractor Supply opened and Ben could go grab a new bulb to put in another lamp. By 8am we had the new lamp in, chicks were warm and quiet. I debated going down to the pigs for a quick check, but neither of them had come out of the shed yet so I decided to go back to sleep for a couple hours.
I woke up at 10am with the plan to make a cup of coffee and run down to check on Sweetheart. I had just taken my first sip when Ben came inside and said he thought something was wrong with Sweetheart, she was in labor, and my dad had just had to pull a piglet that didn't make it. I won't go into the gory details, but it wasn't good. I'll just say the piglets had been too overdue and all were stillborn.
I have one very sick and grieving mama pig in "Oinker ICU", who has needed care around the clock. Don't tell me animals don't grieve. I've seen it multiple times, and I've watched this mama lovingly hold onto her babies and snap at me when I had to take them away. She's also battling a severe infection from what happens when piglets die in utero and she continues to carry them. That means meds every few hours, and forcing her to eat and drink. I did see enough improvement today to finally feel comfortable leaving her. She was finally drinking on her own, taking her meds without giving me too much trouble, and she came out to walk around in the 75 degree sunshine multiple times. (And y'all, that 75 degrees in February thing is another discussion for another day, but whew!)
And, I know this post has been extremely long, but there's a major point to it. Sometimes emergencies arise on the farm, and we can't control when or where we are needed. Sometimes that means delays and saying no to pickups like we have this week. If that means we have to delay a pickup order by a few days or say no, you can't stop by and grab eggs this week, well, sorry not sorry.
Our farm animals are a big part of our farm because they provide our family with income we need to carry on, but they are also a HUGE part of our family. They are not just livestock. They are our pets, and we will take the time to treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve and provide treatment when needed.
With that said, we are back to pickups this week. Because we didn't allow egg pickups Sunday-Wednesday we have extras piling up, and we'll be doing discount pricing this week as a thank you to those who have been understanding. If I contacted you about a delayed shirt order, I'll be contacting you over the next 2 days to reschedule your pickup, and I have included a small thank you for you guys as well!