Farming is Hard Work

As we prepare ourselves and our farm for the umpteen millionth snow storm and frigid cold weather spell this winter, I have been thinking about how much work running this little farm is.  It is hard work on a “normal” day and sometimes downright horrendous on these terrible winter days.  Trudging through snow while carrying heavy loads, at least for me, is hard labor. 

I do the chores by myself during the week and my husband does them on the weekend due to our work schedules.  This works out very well for all of us. This hard work does take it’s toll on a body, especially a 5’2’’ small framed body.  For most of the winter, hay must be carried to the cows and goats, buckets of feed carried to all and the heaviest part of all -the buckets of water to all the animals housed in the barn in the winter.  This is hard heavy work that must be accomplished each morning and afternoon.  We are just a small farm, but without any automation that many of the larger farms have.

In the summer the animals are out on pasture, so there is no hay to haul and most of them drink from the “big” water tank, so there is little to no water to haul.  Chores usually take me about 20 minutes.  Winter is a totally different chore beast.  Chores usually take an hour and maybe longer if there are baby goats to bottle feed, such as now.  We have triplets that had to be brought in the house for a few days at birth due to the cold.  They are now back with momma, but we still have to bottle feed them.

I do chores as fast as I can on the coldest days so I can warm up.  In nicer weather I enjoy staying out with them for a while and watching them interact.  This is how most of our animals became as tame as they are.  I love all of our animals.  I enjoy this daily interaction and I like to think they do too.  In the wintertime this usually doesn’t happen for long if at all.  I really miss this until it warms up in the spring.

My conclusion is that farming on any scale is very hard work, but worth it if you love having animals as I do and the best thing about winter is that eventually spring will come!!  Hopefully sooner rather than later in this especially horrible cold and snowy season.

Spring is on it's way! Have a wonderful day!

Arrival of Triplets!

Saturday morning as my husband was finishing chores he heard a strange sound from the barn.  He, thankfully, went to investigate and found one baby goat kid on the ground.  He rushed in to tell me and the kids and we all rushed out to see.  Momma was cleaning baby off and a few minutes later she laid down for another!  

This momma had twins last summer and she has proved to be a very good mother.  We waited and watched as it is very cold here and we don't have a heated area for them.  Momma gave birth to baby #3 roughtly 45 minutes after baby #1.  We set up the heat lamp for them and helped momma get them dried off.  They were all doing well.  She had 2 girls and a boy.

We came in to warm up a bit, ourselves.  An hour later we went to check on them and thankfully.  They had moved away from the heat lamp and were freezing, literally.  Two of them had frozen ears and one of the little girls I was sure would die. All of their mouths were freezing cold inside, which is a very good sign they are just way too cold. We felt terrible for this wonderful momma, but we were going to have to bring them in the house to warm up.

We bundled them up in an old towel and hurried them inside.  We ran a shallow bath of warm water and soaked them for about 20 minutes.  The smallest little girl was doing the worst.  She couldn't even hold her head up.  After their bath came the blow dryer and towel drying.  After we dried them we attempted to get them to drink.  After a few minutes, they all did drink a little bit.  At this point they were doing better, but I was not convinced we were out of the woods yet.  We left them in the bathroom (small room that doesn't take long to warm up) with a space heater for a little while.  

Eventually they were all running around the bathroom and drank a good amount of the colostrum we had on hand for this kind of situation.  As of now, 4 days later, they are doing great!  We have them in a pen in the house with wood shavings for bedding.  Four times per day we let them run around the kitchen to play while feeding.  My kids and I love to watch these kids run around and play.  They are adorable as ever!  As soon as the weather warms up, they will go to the barn, but for now they are entertaining us in the house.  After a couple days old, goats are pretty hardy animals in cold weather.

One lesson I have learned is that if you keep animals on your farm, you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to save them.  Some of our "non-farm" friends think we are crazy to keep animals in the house if needed in winter, but anyone that ever grew up on a farm without a heated barn has either done this or know people that did.

I am so happy we caught them in time.  Love my goat kids!!