You’ll Make Mistakes When Becoming Self-Sufficient and That’s Okay

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For the past two years, more and more people have been learning about food independence. People are cooking from scratch, gardening, and raising their own animals. And that’s great! It’s a big learning curve, but it’s so worth it in terms of food independence, the confidence of new skills mastered, and delicious meals. 

The internet holds a lot of advice on getting started with various animals. I started raising chickens in 2014, using what I’d learned from books and a fellow farmer to keep my birds alive. Since then, we’ve raised chickens, goats, and lambs for meat. Recently, I took pigs to the processor for the first time and encountered another big learning curve. I had heard pigs were difficult to load into trailers, but I didn’t quite realize the level of psychological warfare it was going to require. 

Because I had always heard you need to lure pigs into trailers with food, the night before, we didn’t give the pigs their dinner assuming Monday morning they’d be ready to follow us anywhere. I even boiled up a big pot of potatoes. My pigs always loved boiled potatoes. 

The pigs had been enclosed in an area with hot wire. We took down the hot wire, backed the trailer in, and grabbed the pot of potatoes.

Becoming self-sufficient takes mistakes.

The pigs were immediately suspicious.

I had never seen them so uninterested in food. We spent probably half an hour trying to get them interested. They would sniff the potatoes but then wouldn’t follow us. I thought maybe they only wanted food from their normal feeder, so we lifted the pig feeder into the trailer. No luck. I thought to myself, maybe we need something more exciting and addictive. We still had some leftover Easter candy from last year. I went inside and brought it back. 

The jelly beans worked, kind of. We had three pigs, a male who was the largest, and then two smaller females. The plan was to get the male into one side of the trailer and the females onto the other side. My kids and I started making a trail of jelly beans from the pigs to the trailer. We joked that we were like Hansel and Gretel. My bigger female was interested right away. She began to follow us, and we were able to lure her into one side of the trailer. We had to help her get her back legs up, but we got her in, and we thought we were on the road to success. 

The pigs were really interested in the jelly beans.

We’d never given them sugar like that before. And before too long, the pigs acted the same way children do at birthday parties when they’re overloaded with sugar. My pig in the trailer started squealing a lot. The other two started running around in circles. We got the other female close to the trailer, but as soon as we opened the door to let her in, the other female crashed out. 

But we had to keep trying. The male seemed to like chocolate better than jellybeans, so we let the females run around and put a trail of chocolate into the other side of the trailer, and that worked. He also needed help getting in, but we were able to do it. One down, happily munching on chocolate and hay. 

The kids and I were getting tired, but the pigs were getting tired too.

They were suspicious, though. It was hard to even get them close to the trailer. One of my children spends a lot of time with horses. She said that sometimes animals need their eyes covered to calm down and be led. We had a large metal trough that we’d put up as a windbreak. It was big enough to flip over the pig, but light enough we could move it.

We tried that, and it actually worked. We were able to push the pig toward the trailer. She couldn’t see, so she wasn’t as nervous. We got her to the back of the trailer, opened the door, flipped the trough back, and my daughter was inside the trailer holding jelly beans for the piggy. My older son and I were able to push her back legs up, and she was in. 

She was in, and she was exhausted. She lay down right at the entrance and wouldn’t budge, and that proved to be the end of our pig-loading adventure. The third pig was the most suspicious. She had, after all, been in the trailer before. We tried every trick we’d tried before and could get her close to the trailer, but the other female had fallen asleep right at the entrance, and we couldn’t move her.

My youngest son had been keeping my dogs distracted during this whole ordeal. I asked him what time it was. He said 9:20. I had wanted to leave at 7. We had needed to leave at 9 to reach the processor on time. I told the kids we were just going to have to leave the third.

So, that’s what we did.

Tired and filthy from sliding around in pig mud, we drove down and dropped the pigs off. I was embarrassed to show up so late and without a pig, but the processor said stuff like that always happened with pigs. We also found that the family-owned restaurant I’d been looking forward to visiting after dropping off the pigs had closed (thanks, Covid rules!). I’d brought bagels along for the kids, so they had food, but I didn’t get around to eating anything till two that afternoon. I got a bacon cheeseburger. I was in the mood for bacon after that ordeal.

Failures of this magnitude provide learning opportunities. So, what did we learn?

The kids and I had a few discussions about next time.

Next time we do pigs, we’ll back the trailer into their area a couple of weeks before the processing date and start keeping the feed in there, so the pigs get used to going in and out of the trailer. That’s what we’re doing with our Lone Survivor piggy right now. Once I got back, I put the trailer into where the piggy enclosure used to be, unhitched it, and now she readily gets in and out whenever it’s time for food.

It’s not like we didn’t have any experience with loading animals. But chickens are easy to grab when they’re asleep, we had leash-trained our goats, and sheep have nice big horns that are easy to grab onto and simply lead into trailers. Chickens, goats, and sheep are also not 300+ pounds. I had thought my pigs were between 150 and 200 pounds. Imagine my surprise when they got onto the scale at the processor, and the two together were 625 pounds. No wonder we couldn’t budge them when they laid down!

We’re going to bring in the third pig next week when we pick up the meat from the first two.

I feel bad that her friends are gone. I destroyed the hot wire to back the trailer in, thinking I wouldn’t need it anymore anyway, so for now, she hangs out with my dogs. Fortunately, the ground has been cold enough that she isn’t really doing much damage.

For now, all the kids and I can do is laugh at ourselves, and the right TV shows can help us. We like Bob’s Burgers because it’s another show about a family trying to run a small business where things constantly go wrong.

(Things going wrong is a part of life. All the more reason to read our free QUICKSTART Guide to the four levels of disaster, right?)

A lot of people are making changes right now, whether through choice or necessity, and if you’re struggling, it helps to remember that other people are probably struggling too.

If you’ve been frustrated trying to start a garden or cook from scratch, keep in mind that things go wrong even for people that have been homesteading for a decade or more. I’ve been loading various animals into trailers for years. I had thought I could handle loading pigs into a trailer in something resembling a timely fashion. Nope. We failed, but we have to keep on trying. That’s just how it goes. The day you stop learning is the day they put you in the ground, and failure is part of that.

Learning to raise your own food and becoming more self-sufficient is a worthy endeavor, and I really think it will take a lot of people to become a little more independent in these ways to make the United States strong again. The world isn’t a nice place. It has never been. For the past 80 years or so, a large chunk of the population has been able to get away with thinking that if everyone just does their one job, they can trust the supply chains to bring them everything else. That’s not the case anymore.

Those who insist on only doing one job and trusting “the economy” to handle everything else will be the ones sleepwalking into Klaus Schwab’s nightmare world of urban surveillance regimes where everyone eats bugs, owns nothing, and is happy. If you don’t think the world powers are trying to make this happen, you’re not paying attention.

The only real alternative is opting out of the current system in whatever little ways we can. For some of us, that means raising livestock, with its chasing animals and getting muddy. For many others, it will be various side endeavors, with the risks and rewards of running independent ventures. Jose has written many times about the little ways in which people in Venezuela have gotten by after the collapse of their economy. Those most willing to work hard and adapt fare the best.

Becoming self-sufficient takes mistakes.

So if you’re having a hard time becoming more self-sufficient, don’t let it get you down. Even relatively experienced people have occasional catastrophic failures. Keep talking to people. Keep reading websites full of useful tips! It may not feel like it sometimes, but there are a lot of like-minded people out there to support you.

About Joanna

Joanna has been homeschooling three children since 2012. In 2014, she moved to the High Plains of Colorado. She and her children began a little homestead, gardening and raising chickens for eggs and meat. One animal led to another, and these days they have livestock guardian dogs, chickens, geese, ducks, alpacas, goats, pigs, and one very spoiled cat.

Picture of Joanna Miller

Joanna Miller

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  • I laughed so hard at your pig story. Loading up reluctant animals is the most frustrating thing ever!

    When we had our farm we had one extremely mischievous goat and the other goat always followed the rotten one. Well, one morning at about 7:30, they managed to squeeze out of our fence. I was making coffee when I heard hooves clattering on the road in front of our house. I looked out the window and there were my goats, frolicking in the middle of the road.

    I yelled and woke up my daughter, pulled on boots with my nightgown, and went running out in the road like a madwoman chasing goats. My daughter, also in pajamas, joined me. Those elusive goats thought it was all a wonderful game.

    Thankfully, we lived in farm country. It wasn’t long before 3 pickup trucks had stopped and our neighbors helped us to corral the unruly livestock.

    We got them into the barn, fixed the escape route, and made it back in for coffee about 2 hours later. It’s hilarious looking back on it but in the moment I was about ready to throw in the towel.

  • Yep, livestock can be both a blessing and a pain.
    Get them socialized to yourself so they are comfortable with you being around. Just like dogs, goats, hogs, even cows like to have their backs scratched. The goats will give me tail wags.
    If you get them at a early age, you can train them. Usually takes one or two moves and the pigs then get the idea of what to do for moving day. Then it is easy. That first move though . . .
    Electric fence, one or two good zaps, and the goats and cows learn not to do that again.
    Pigs on the other hand, every now and again, I will hear a squeal of nose against 3kv or more.

  • Thank you for sharing that story – it brought a smile to my face because, in the end you had a partial victory and figured out a way to accomplish your goal with the remaining gelt. I hope there is a part 2 victory you share. Makes me miss the sweet gelt our daughter raised for 4H a couple years
    back . She was the only gelt at fair (we live in a mostly urban county so we’re lucky if there are 10 hogs at fair) and she was utterly devoted to my daughter. When it was time to load up the hogs into the trailer at the end of fair week, headed for the processor, she raised her head high and followed my daughter obediently into the trailer and the other pigs followed her. It was the easiest load up anyone could remember and I’m sure it was a once in a lifetime event. But we understand that was an exception rather than the rule.

    I know the prepper community has been preaching for years about learning curve and that is gospel truth. I’ve had way more failures than successes. Or maybe not failure, but, to paraphrase Thomas Edison, I’ve learned 10,000 ways how not to garden/raise animals /put up food, etc. Glad to have the opportunity to experience that learning curve when the stakes aren’t life or death high over the years and operate on the expectation of potential failure anytime something new is undertaken.

    I think the other piece worth mentioning is how hard working toward self-sufficiency is mentally, physically, and emotionally. Having not been raised in that tradition and apparently lacking the “grit” gene, it took me a long time to develop the discipline to do things that needed to be done even if I didn’t feel like it or the weather was bad or I was sick. Not to mention the heartbreaking losses of vegetables decimated by deer or animals wiped out by a predator or even knowing some animals will end up in the freezer (it gets easier over time but there is a mental preparedness aspect that is hard to gain from book learning). Not sure how effective it is to convey that reality to others using words. Experiential learning is the best teacher but it surely helps to have mentors willing to share their wisdom and advice to help lessen the learning curve a bit.

    Thanks Organic Prepper community for all your wisdom over the years. You’re the best!

  • I had a professor in college who always said he could never trust a student who didn’t make a mistake because that student was either unchallenged or cheating, and neither was good. I’ve made plenty since I started prepping in 2010, and I haven’t even gotten around to livestock yet! The lessons we learn the hard way seem to stick the longest, and they teach persistence.

  • The timing of this article is crazy! I had an appointment to take my new trotter over to the harness shop to have her fit and draped for her gear. She’s a two yo filly, so I have to buy gear she can grow into.

    My little hackney stallion broke free of me (my fault, I broke my grandfathers first rule)in his excitement to meet the new mare (like he could do anything with her without a ladder), and ran around the farm over hill and dale, showing off as only a stallion can. I just let him really stretch out, followed him with the UV smiling, knowing he was going to run out of gas before I did. Caught him a mile from the barn, led him home, came in to eat and read this. Life on the farm, no matter how large or small is imperfect.

    Great story about loading the hogs.????

    BTW, my grandfathers first rule? NEVER turn your back on a stallion,bull, or boar.

    • Add buck to that, lol! My sweet medium sized buck used his impressive horns on me because I wasn’t paying enough attention. Even non-aggressive full males can’t be trusted ALL the time. My little buck is in the freezer now. (He was headed there anyway, but I felt less guilty after the events)

  • I own a Mom & Pop Shop that’s like Legacy Box for the past 22 years. I love being away from the Corporate nightmare. The nice thing is I can shut down my office space and move my whole operation to my house if I was forced to.
    I’ve raised Chickens since 2010 and recently a neighbor came to me and started asking questions about chickens. I said, “Sounds like you’re thinking about getting some chickens?” He said “yeah, I know you’ve had chickens for so long I wanted to pick your brain for ideas and tips.”
    A week later, I helped him build his coop. Showed him which chicken breeds were the best egg layers, where to find the cheapest food in our area, etc.
    I also have had a garden since 2008. I think that will be my neighbor’s next project.
    Then……canning all those extra veggies he’ll grow.

  • I laughed out loud as I read about your adventure in loading pigs! A couple of years ago, we had ONE pig to load and a couple of friends to help. It had rained recently so every step was shin deep in the pig pen (Ewww!). Three hours later, the loaded pig (and the people) were totally exhausted. My husband looked me straight in the eye and said “never again.” She arrived at the processing plant early the next morning…weighing in at a whopping 625 pounds.
    My husband is now talking about getting a breeding pair. I was surprised but not opposed.
    We started with chickens (they are definitely the gateway drug to homesteading). Added goats and ducks, and plan to add rabbits, quail and bees.
    We have made mistakes and had some failures, but we just carry on. Our homestead gives us a reason to get out of bed each morning.

  • Great write up! I know your pig pain well. Nothing builds fortitude in a family or community like working through the struggles together!

  • I started my adventure into self-sufficiency in 1977 when I purchased a small holiday cottage (detached – 3 bed) in Westcombe, Nr Shepton Mallet, deep in the heart of rural Somerset with two acres of rough field, in SW England. I was armed with John Seymour’s book about self-sufficiency generated by the BBC programme of the 1970s – “The Good Life” – we were all energised and excited to be part of the ‘new economy’. It appears to have been upgraded since then:
    https://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Complete-Book-Self-Sufficiency-Realists/dp/0241352460

    Here’s a clip: This is how it started for us:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf_qVE1sWMY AND a little longer one:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmaCQrUtFVU

    It was only a few years ago that I discovered from a friend that preparing raw land for cropping does not involve “double digging”. In 1978 I set about preparing x4 – 10metres square plots for cropping and worked it by hand, faithfully digging in lime (a clay soil) and horse manure from our two horses which we ‘hacked’ rather than hunted. Before extending the house to accommodate my four young children, I built my stable and hay barn as a priority (the kids could wait!). And of course they did wait – a long time before I finally made a 5 bedroom extension with all the amenities (two girls and two boys) with even a double bathroom and showers. Then they grew up and left the family home!

    I now learn that there is no need to ‘double dig’, in fact it is detrimental to the natural ability of the soil to yield its treasurers, by merely skimming the surface (I have no data on this yet) and remain sceptical. Anyway, we brought up our children on goat’s milk, garden produce by the ton and had x4 deep freezers together with a coal-fired aga (in USA it might be something different). My story is long, and a trifle boring for some, but I am willing to write an article on Substack when I have a moment in between all this war thing!
    https://austrianpeter.substack.com/p/the-fourth-turning-pits-the-people?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoyOTUwMzA1MCwicG9zdF9pZCI6NDk3NzM5OTUsIl8iOiIzeUliVSIsImlhdCI6MTY0NjQ2Nzg2NSwiZXhwIjoxNjQ2NDcxNDY1LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNzYyNzkyIiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.X1KevQrseJH5GUU9qTgOZ1tdINEr_Bl0VUCLTx2e82o&s=w

    • I’d love to read your story! We discovered Good Neighbors here in the states in the early 80s and it quickly became a favorite. I could quote most of the dialog because we’ve watched it so much. I think the Christmas episode – Silly But It’s Fun is one of the best.

  • I m so glad you shared your pig story. Much can be learned from that.
    I did get a good laugh out of it n feel a bit guilty about that.
    I admire your strength n courage. Well done!!

  • I have READ -(can’t say personal experience on this one- so take this info with a side of salt)
    But .. it feels relevant ..

    I have read that you may have more luck to “back” a pig. Like backing up a truck.
    Put a rope on the pig and Pull away from the trailer, and the pig will instinctively pull away from your tug and back itself into a trailer.

    Thanks for sharing such a fun story of struggle. We all struggle, and sometimes it’s really hard for it to be funny – but life is so much better when we can laugh at it together.
    Really Thanks

  • Folks who make mistakes do so by actually doing something. Them that don’t do anything often think themselves perfect.

  • I need to get to Kashmir. I am sick of living in this country. There are more terrorists in America than there are in the Middle East. I have not been there, but I know that to be true. Everyone in government and health care in America are criminals. Only criminals believe that they can violate other people’s rights, and only criminals believe that the law does not apply to themselves.

    So, if you manage to succeed in this country as a law abiding citizen, they will destroy you by any means necessary, since they are all criminals running the show, they resent anyone being able to one up them of succeeding without being a criminal. That has been my experience. Everyone in government and healthcare are terrorists.

    Abu Zabaydah, Gitmo detainee and torture victim has revealed who the terrorists are, after being abducted, falsely imprisoned, and tortured for over twent years.

    The terrorists are John Kiriakou, that kidnapped, falesly imrisoned, and tortured Zabaydah, American psychologists Mitchel and Jessen of Mitichel and Jessen Associates in Spokane Washington, the United States government, the government of Poland, where Zanayday was first brought to the CIA black op torture site and tortured by Polish psychologists, NATO, the UN, the WHO, American Psychologists and mental health care workers, the U.S. military, and the media.

    It is extremely unfortunate that Zabaydah had to go through all of that just to show everyone who the terrorists are. I am one of their victims too.

    • And this has what to do with the article? Is someone or something holding you back from leaving ,what’s the problem? Or are you a Troll?

  • Which boats go to Kashmir? Surprised that you didn’t tell me to take the train.

    Andrea Iravani

  • I forgot to include Cuba for leasing the space to “the American capitalists” and capitalizing off of Americans torturing innocent people in their communist utopia.

  • John Smith,

    Abu Zabaydah was entirely self sufficient. He was an innocent person and was not in Al Qaeda. He has never been charged with or convicted of any crime. Not that being a criminal would justify being tortured. I oppose torture and terrorism under any and all circumstances because it is sadistic, pointless, and a completely evil and useless thing to do! He became a hermit after his friend unexpectedly died was kidnapped by John Kiriakou.

    A troll is when someone just says something stupid and is usually wrong about it. This is an extremely important topic that is not covered enough in the media. If you do not mind being kidnapped and illegally detained and tortured for over twenty years, by the CIA or having a loved one kidnapped and illegally detained and tortured by them for over twenty years, then it is
    something that you should just ignore.

  • The WHO does not even understand what herd immunity is. They are going to be meeting to decide on parameters for ending the pandemic. They are saying that people are still catching the virus so herd immunity has not been achieved. There is no such thing as covid-19. Herd immunity does not mean that a species will no longer contract a virus. It means that the herd or species will not become extinct from it.

  • Exerpts from Lawfareblog on Gitmo Torture Detainee Abu Zabatday:

    Soon, Abu Zubaydah was cast as the United States’ first “high-value detainee” and became the solitary subject of an Aug. 1, 2002, memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to the CIA’s acting general counsel, John Rizzo. The document was titled “Interrogation of al Qaeda Operative.” But as the Senate intelligence committee’s groundbreaking torture report noted in 2014, the CIA conceded in 2006 that Abu Zubaydah “was not a member of Al Qaeda” (Page 410). Further, effective Jan. 24, 2018, Abu Zubaydah was delisted by the United Nations Security Council from its Islamic State and al-Qaeda Sanctions List, based on the recommendation of the U.N. ombudsperson, who also concluded that Abu Zubaydah was not a member of al-Qaeda (Case 78).

    Once the government decided that the CIA could abuse Abu Zubaydah, the agency flew him to Thailand, where he was tortured in a CIA “black site.” Before it began, the CIA’s interrogation team, knowing what would be inflicted upon the prisoner, sought and obtained protection from their superiors in this devil’s bargain:

    [E]specially in light of the planned psychological pressure techniques to be implemented, we need to get reasonable assurances that Abu Zubaydah will remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life.

    Officers from the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, called the ALEC station, replied:

    There is a fairly unanimous sentiment within HQS that Abu Zubaydah will never be placed in a situation where he has any significant contact with others and/or has the opportunity to be released… [A]ll major players are in concurrence that Abu Zubaydah should remain incommunicado for the remainder of his life. – Lawfareblog

    https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-politics-and-media-still-get-wrong-about-abu-zubaydah

  • Once humanity has adopted a culture of death for its own survival, then it is impossible to survive being in the culture of humanity.

  • Who would want anything to do with a society that allows people to get away with torturing, terrorizing, doing sick Mengele like nazi experimentaion on without informing people or receiving consent, falsely imprisoning people in their own homes or elsewhere, illegally enslaving people by spying on them and stealing from them, vandalising their property, ex-communicating them through hacking, gas-lighting, organized community stalking, and online organized community stalking of people?

    The people that do things like that to other people are not wild animals, because wild animals do not do things like that, only evil monsters do.

    You would really have to be a retarded lunatic that would want  anything to do with a society that did and allowed things like that to be done to people, but all of those things have been happening to me for the past eight years in Ozaukee County in Grafton, Wisconsin, USA.

    Andrea Iravani

  • The median networth of congress members is $900,000. The median networth of senators is $3.2 million. The median networth of an entire household in America is $121,760.

    But look at all that we get in return for it!

    Treason! Tyranny! & Terrorism!

    It has become obvious that the government exists for one purpose only, to destroy the citizenry, and those that are evil enough to assist them in the InfraGard gestapo police state surveillance state/corporate state/government and academia state, and those in that are in the military, the WHO,  and the medical mafia will be financially rewarded for elevating the government that has the intentions of destroying the citizenry in a cannibalistic and blood thirsty vampire feast.

    Are you like, really super duper excited about the 2022 elections?!

    Andrea Iravani

  • I think that the government’s and Silicon Valley’s obsession with prosecuting Assange is less about Assange and more about detering people in government and Silicon Valley from exposing corruption. Assange is not an American citizen. Assange dud not even spy on American government. He is a journalist. Assange has not committed any crime. The government has no right at all to be committing crime. Exposing government corruption is not a national crime. Concealing government corruption is a national crime. All NDAs are legally exempt from any and all illegal activity. It is illegal to try to claim that an NDA prevents someone from exposing crime. It is a form of intimidation. Fox News has tried this on their employees over sexual harassment claims, which they then claimed that they released them from non disclosure agreements on that matter, but it is illegal to prevent someone from talking about crime, or from trying to prosecute criminal activity.

  • I’d like to add something here. Homestead preppers will make mistakes. No matter how much experience one has. I’ll use myself as an example with something I’ve been dealing with the last 50 hours. Consider your own homestead vet preps in this post.

    5 days ago my 6 yo superstar high production a2/a2 Jersey (Diva) freshened. Knowing this is her fourth lactation, I was sensitive to the likelihood she may go down from “milk fever” https://extension.psu.edu/trouble-shooting-milk-fever-and-downer-cow-problems

    IME if I can get a dairy cow through the first 48 hrs doing well, I’ve done my job. Well, as I said, Diva is a HIGH PRODUCTION cow. Forgetting this fact was my first mistake. She’s a high producer even though I feed no grain. Ever. Two complete milkings (1X/ day with baby nursing around the clock is more than adequate for healthy cows) yielded ~100#’s of colostrum heavy milk. Right on target. So far so good, right? Day three yielded 22#’s. WTH? It was cold, wet miserable. Calf was plump and doing well, so I didn’t worry. That was my second mistake.

    Late that evening, beer in hand, smile on my face and enjoying the sounds of a calm sweet smelling barn, I noticed Diva is laying down with her head turned into her belly and her eyes wide open moaning. Oh, crap. Go into the lounging pen to check. Her ears, belly and udder are stone cold. Milk fever. I got too confident. Mistake number 3.

    Got her into her stall. Tied her in. She went down on me. As I tried to balance her to lay her on her other side (idiot move on my part, I’m getting old) her weight pinned me against her stall bar and I felt it (pop!), dislocated rib. Just like that. Got to the house. Told my wife (greatest woman ever, I don’t deserve her) what’s going on gathered my crash pack and went out to start IV treatment. 500 ml/calcium & 500 ml/dextrose. She took it. Got up 1 hour later, ate and drank. Done right? Where’s my beer? Damn, I’m one hell of a stockman!

    Milk her 8 hours later next morning. 14#’s of milk. She was sick last night, so, I ignored it. She’s up now. My work is done here. Strike 4.

    Go out 3 hours later. She’s down again! WTF!?! A relapse? 50 years. I’ve never treated a relapse. Never. She’s down now harder than last night and plummeting fast. Her heart rate is so low her milk veins are collapsed and her hide is like concrete. And I’m out of calcium and dextrose now! Why didn’t I buy 2 of each? Call dad. He gets hold of one of the last dairy farms left and blessedly they hooked us up. But now I have a new problem getting the IV going. The big 14ga needle is too big and not precise enough for collapsed veins so I had to switch to an 18ga syringe needle but the flow rate will be slowed drastically with decreased bp.

    We got it in her. It took forever but she got it. Dad was there and said, “she needs salt, potassium, and magnesium and a 10 cc shot of Pen-G” Bonnie cross referenced quickly. Found an article from the UK that suggested pink Himalayan salt and sports drink powder administered in a 100 ml drench. Holy crap! We have all that! Got it in her.

    After almost losing a prized cow twice. Breaking a rib. And committing an embarrassment of mistakes, we got her across the finish line. Last night she was back up to 25#’s and gaining.

    Bottom line. We all make mistakes. But hubris may be the costliest. Double and triple up on vet meds and check your ego at the barn door.

    • ~Jim,
      Glad to hear you were able to bring her back.
      Bummer about the rib.

      Yeah, I had a doe (goat) that rejected a kidd. I thought I had got it in time, into the house, hot water bottle under it (1.5L wine bottle and cork, keep a few around!!) and wrapped in a blanket. He seemed fine. Put a heating mat under him, got some powder colostrum in him.
      Next morning, dead.
      Dang.

      • Ah, man. That’s the worst feeling. Spiked kidds and lambs are the most frustrating. Work ones butt off doing everything right and that happens.

        Spiked losses bother me the most. You invest time working them up and just when you think you got them going, bam!, kiddsicle next morning.

        Truly hope your kidding season is going well otherwise.

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