Cow Girl Up!

Forget the Farm Wife boots, I'm ready for my own coveralls! Today this City Gal turned Farm Wife got down and dirty doctoring piglets!

Husband came in to get his side snips to start cutting the piglets' teeth. Once he got started he realized he needed a hand and since mine were the only hands available, I was nominated. I traded in my PJ's for jeans, an old sweatshirt, my mud boots, and my trusty Carhartt (no self respecting Farm Wife would go anywhere without it), and loaded the pockets with penicillin, iodine, and a syringe.

After a balancing act that would've made my high school gym teacher proud, I crawled into the hog shed with Husband. It's not tall enough to stand up in, so everything had to be done in a crouched position. Husband caught the first of the piglets and we got started.

Pigs have 8 very sharp teeth that tend to grow to extraordinary lengths (Husband says they're called "wolf teeth"). They can also make the sow refuse to let them nurse. These had to be cut off to keep momma pig happy and to keep them from trying to eat one another. Husband held them down, pried their mouths open and held their lips out of the way. I cut out the teeth... At least for a few of them. We had to switch jobs pretty often because as Husband pointed out, I had no idea what I was doing (Hence the whole "City Gal" thing). We ended up him cutting, me holding, but we got it done.

Then they had to have antibiotic shots. Husband showed me how and then turned that job over to me. Once I got over my intense dislike of breaking the skin I did pretty good (It's kind of hard to give a piglet a shot without breaking the skin).

Finally Husband held the piglet, I held the tail, and Husband docked it. He was going to let me do it (for about 3 seconds) but he changed his mind. For that I'm eternally thankful! He had to pull out veins to prevent bleeding, and I'm not sure I was up to that. We only docked the boars' tails so we could tell the difference at a glance. Also to keep track of G-1 and G-2 piglets. That is first and second generations. You can breed a gilt to her sire, but not to her grandsire.

We had to do all 9 piglets squatting in the hog shed. All the time I was hoping the sow who's stall we were in didn't try to come visit. She did once, but I dissuaded her with a push to the snout.
Quite an adventure!