Victor Justin Rhodes' sow died unexpectedly, leaving two-week-old piglets without their mother. The family switches to bottle feeding with skim milk, calls in advice from Jordan Green at Farm Builder, and works through the immediate crisis of keeping the piglets alive on the homestead.
He died overnight. How old are those piglets?
2 weeks.
That's our only hope. Were they eating any grain, Josiah? I don't know. Did that one just eat?
Yeah, but they can't survive on just grain.
Maybe they can. They might be just old enough. Are they getting anything? So sad. Gave them some skim milk. They probably need whole milk. I don't think they're getting anything. She looks sore from them scratching her, trying to get something. I doubt they know how to use this nipple water. Just told Rebecca. She took it surprisingly well. She's gonna see if Tractor Supply has some bottles. She's heard of people bottle feeding. This is warm milk.
We do. I could only find one.
And you're gonna see if that bottle works, and if it does, you're gonna get more bottles. I hope somebody has bottles like that in town. They do.
They have Tractor Supply. Oh, has them. I looked at two different stores. One has 6, the other has 12.
There's a piglet out and it's on mom's garden. There's a bunch of chickens out. There's two piglets out. Come here, Gideon. Chase it towards that way. They got out right there, or they got in this other piglet's— pig's pen and got out. Okay, well, I hope they get hungry soon. Hungry enough to go for that bowl. Messing around with that feed— more like standing in it. Don't think they've touched the skim. We do need to get them whole milk. I've got to cut some slits in her leg so that we can hook up the Gambrel and get her out.
We get her out, we'll stop trying to nurse her and they'll look for food elsewhere.
This is a little tricky, Josiah. You have to pull her straight out. You might have to start turning that way to keep her going straight. I think that bucket is the best idea.
She still had placenta stuff in her.
Bleh! Oh my barf.
You want this?
We've had it all day. Come on.
Come on, it's okay, baby.
Come on, nurse it.
We'll make it through, okay?
I came around the corner and hit the greenhouse handle. They're not nursing. I mean, they're too wild. I mean, we haven't handled them. They're little piglets. Probably train them to if we have to, but we think they'll get hungry enough that they do figure it out and drink out of that pan. I'm gonna fill it up with more, just make it easier for them. I think you guys will get hungry enough. She'll figure it out. Top this off so it's super full. We stepped away for just 5 minutes.
The word on the street has been eating.
And Gideon, you have neglected getting the eggs. Oh my word, they're doing it! Heck yes! How many we end up with? We go from one problem to one— one bad thing to one good thing. Rebecca, well, one, eggs.
Yes.
And two, all the piglets are drinking.
They are?
Yeah, they're bored enough. We just need to check them like every 2 hours to keep that milk.
We have got—
right now I'm not drinking our own milk for a while. Lily, are you doing half ration on her? That's fine. She's doing half ration because we are gonna dry her off. Back to the full ration. 5 weeks they need it. 3 more weeks. Okay, it's 1 o'clock. We're gonna check, check the piglets. Okay, nobody's dead. They've drank over half of that milk, Rebecca. They look fat and happy. We talked to Jordan Green, my coach mentor. Definitely encourage you guys to check him out. Find out— hey, I'm trying to plug somebody here. Farm Builder on YouTube. He has an amazing farm, pig farm, up in Virginia. I don't know why I turned the camera so you can see her cough. He thought, okay, we had a piece of the placenta, she probably went then had sepsis. Pigs are beasts. You don't know they're sick until they're dead. If you do know they're sick, they're sick. She didn't show any signs. She was out and about yesterday. I'm glad in a way because I thought Oh my gosh, it was 83 yesterday. Did they get too hot in the greenhouse? So I was just like beating myself up, and no, they didn't, because one of these sides actually got dropped down accidentally, but everybody else is fine. That pig, the piglets, the chickens. And I'm in here now and it's not that crazy. Uh-oh, who's the pretty girl? Is this what happens when you have an older sister? You're hilarious. And is this what happens when you have a homestead and do all home-scratched meals every day? It's an explosion in here. We just can't, we just can't keep up either.
Imagine if we didn't have this stuff over here.
Here you go, guys. It's a little warm in here. It's not overly hot though, but we are going to get that. We need to get them out to the side. They don't even care that I'm here. I love it.
Almost 4 o'clock and they've ate that and they've ate a lot of their, their feed.
I don't like going in there with these cages. I don't blame them. I'm quite happy because last thing I would want is one of my children to get hurt by a male on this farm. Okay, put it down right here. When we did yesterday, these ones are even. What is happening here? What happened to all these chickens getting out?
Well, we opened it.
I think everybody's out, even the goose. Is there any chickens left in there? Get in, get in, open that door! Hey, Lily, can you come help? Josiah too. I don't know what's harder. Herding chickens or hurting chickens with children? They seem to both think similar. Looks faster. We go slow and steady. They walked right by it. Okay, they've eaten all their grain. Just— where's their milk pail? Oh look, they're getting water out of the water. It's a lively bunch. You guys are gonna make it, huh? They are out of milk. They don't need to be out of milk, but we are out of milk. Your kids aren't going to be able to drink milk for 3 weeks. How's that make you feel if you give up milk for 3 weeks? I don't think they've done that ever. Josiah had the idea to milk in the buckets for the pigs since it's all going to the pigs. They drink every single bit of Flossie's milk Lily gave them this morning. It's pretty amazing, the sustaining life force that is a cow keeping these piglets alive. We better go wash this. You coming for a ride? Yeah, yeah, let's go get them some skim. You got your hat? Yeah, the tractor hat for a tractor boy. Trick is getting it over there without spilling. We've got all these extra eggs because it's spring. Good, put it back. We're gonna wash it a little later. Now I think we can put it back in Sally and we won't spill. Just look around, you'll definitely find something. Mix it with a boomerang. Here they come, they're curious. They don't have the internet, so this is great excitement. Grain soup. Fellas, enjoy.
If I had to start my Homestead all over again, it could only pick one animal… 
