I was fortunate enough this round to have backup for birthing of the piglets. Stevens girlfriend Lea was home for the holidays and helped me and Steven out a lot by bottle feeding the smallest piglet for a couple days as well as being there while she was giving birth and we were both working. My wife also helped out a lot this time as well.
Lady had her litter right on her due date and had 11 very healthy piglets. Unfortunately one got laid on a couple days later by Berky during the -12 degree cold we had last week. She didn't do it on purpose as she simply laid down with Lady to give Daisy pig some room as she was close to having hers and didn't want any company and the little one was hiding in the straw instead of being in the hot box with the rest.
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| Berkshire x Tamworth cross piglets eating. |
Daisy Pig had her litter on Thursday morning. She had an unbelievable 17 total. However, she started after I went to work and before my wife got up and she apparently had some issues and there were only 10 live ones at the end. The smallest also passed away last night leaving just 9. However, she is feeding those 9 the milk for 17 so they are gonna grow very fast. Also, if you notice, Daisy is watching Daisy Pig who is peaking into the hot box to spy on her little ones. Daisy is such a huge help with the baby piglets that I do not know what we would do without her. Within seconds of a piglet popping out she is cleaning it off and getting it up and moving around. She has actually saved many of them by licking them and getting them breathing and moving around where as they might not have started breathing without the extra stimulation!
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| Daisy and Daisy Pig later in the day after birthing was finished. |
Here is a picture of all the babies piled up together during the cold weather right after birth. With all the heat lamps it was a toasty 85-90 degrees in there napping area and a chilly 5 degrees outside of the hot box. If you look closely at the picture you can pick out the piglets that Daisy Pig had. They are either belted or have a solid golden brown color. She is a Duroc Hampshire cross and Red balls is full blooded Tamworth.
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| The belted and brown piglets are out of Daisy Pig |
So, as I have said before I do snow removal for the company I work for. Last winter I went from pushing snow to managing it. I was looking forward to the challenge. There are days where I miss being able to just come to work and plow. Well, I now have a backup manager who I am training to do what I do so we can get a break during the long events. We were down several people last night so my counter part continued to manage and I got to run one of the new Kage skid steer plows that we have. This thing is awesome!!! It converts from a straight blade to a pusher box in seconds just by curling into a couple of hooks with the brackets you see in the pic on the top of the blade. So, you get the benefit of a pusher box and a plow all in the same unit. I was able to do the same property that took me 4 hours with a truck in 2.75 hours with this unit on a one speed skid steer! It was so relaxing to just zone out and push!!!
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| Plowing snow with a Kage Plow |
Now, as I have also mentioned before I work for a very diverse group of very unique customers. I have one who loves, absolutely loves to ski and hunt. He also happens to be a neighbor of mine for many many years. So when he asked if we could help him make snow on his private ski slope during the winter I was happy to help out. Now, the colder it gets the easier it is to make snow and the more snow you can make with the same amount of water. I wanted to show the results of just one night of running the snow cannons on the hill during below zero weather. It piles up very fast. The piles would have been even more enormous if we hadn't had sustained 20-30 mph winds for the first two days of snow making. This was one of the medium piles, we had a 10 more similar to size with this as well as one that was about 25' tall!
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| Steven and Daisy checking out one of the snow piles we made. |
Last week at this time it was about 45-50 degrees. Then, without 48 hours it went down to -12 here at the barn. Now we are back up to 50 again today and they are calling for another blast of arctic cold later this week......when is summer coming back????!!!!
Hope everyone is having a great weekend. I am headed out to clean the barn and get something accomplished today! Talk to everyone soon!
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