It's quadruplets!

[Nugget]

Just a quick update on my wee charges. They're all gaining .1g a day, which is good. The runt weighs .5g less than the rest, so I worry about that one.
With five little squirmies I had to be able to tell which ones had eaten and which still needed to be fed, so I marked them with nail polish. I have One Ear, Two Ears. One foot, Two feet and # 5 is Nothing.


Jake took a picture and here's the debut!

[NobodySpecial268]

Eyes not open yet?

[Nugget]

Eyes not open yet?

No. I'm seeing most sites say 7-10 days but a rehab site says 4-7 days. 
Feedding is still a struggle, but itwas a little better today. I have some differet nipples coming but they won't be here until Wednesday-unless the UPS gods decide to smile down on me. 

[FCD]

Speaking of feeding intervals.  We had one of our momma cows get a malady called 'Mastisis' (sp?) (i.e. hardening of the udder).  We didn't know it at first, but her little bull calf kept getting skinnier and skinnier even though he was nursing constantly.  Had our vet come out an look her over.  Sure enough, he was getting next to no milk, and what milk he was getting was bad.  Poor guy.  My lovely bride took him on as her personal "project".  She fed that lil' guy 3x per day for 4 months.  Within a week he was up to two half gallon bottles of milk replacer per feeding.  Got him fattened up to the point he actually looked better than the other calves.  Probably spent about $2 grand on that calf.  Took him to auction at 5 months and only wound up getting about $350 bucks for him (I was not happy!  Pissed, is more accurate).  He was a nice lookin' little bull calf too (Belted Galloway).  Auction house really oversold him in all their advertising so they held him back until the end of the auction (to suck as much money out of everyone as possible on all the other animals).  When he came across the block all the big spenders were spent.  Learned a valuable lesson that day!  He was worth at least $4k. 

Told the auction house never to pull that shit again or that would be the last one of our animals they ever saw!  I was mad as a hornet.  Haven't brought a single animal back there, despite their pleas and offers to waive auction fees for like...life.  Homey don' play dat shit!  But I digress...

Anyway, yeah, the feeding intervals can be hell.  We had a really wintery spring that year too, and my poor bride endured major hardships with that guy, out there feeding his hungry butt 3x per day in raging snowstorms.  I told her we should just plan on making up a giant vat of Ossobuco (one of her specialties)!  She didn't like that idea too much!  

[Nugget]

That's so sad! Most people have no idea just how much work goes into everything they see on their grocery store shelves. Farming and ranching is a 28 hour, 8 day a week job.

In one of my past lives I was a backyard  farmer with a huge garden, a goat, a pig, rabbits and 150 chickens. I've never worked so hard in my life!

I'll never forget the day we went to get feed and when we got home the goat had managed to get the door open. He was standing proudly on the kitchen table and chickens were everywhere! Sure was a lot of clean-up after that invasion.....