How to Know Farmers Care About Their Animals

Perhaps the biggest argument I hear when engaging animal rights activists, both online and in the real world, is that farmers can't possibly care about their animals. After all, activists argue, they rape them, feed them to obesity, and then kill them, right?

Not even close.

This has been a subject that's been weighing on my mind a lot lately. If you follow my blog and/or social media associated with it, you'll know that I manage a herd of purebred boer goats in South Texas, on top of being a full time college student at Texas A&M University. On Wednesday, I had to rush home because one of our does was in labor, and had been for at minimum about twelve hours. She had been observed in labor the night before at 10:00pm, but since she was a seasoned doe who had kidded before numerous times and birthed at least a dozen baby goats (including two sets of triplets) all by herself, we assumed there was no problem. My sister, the one who found her, called me that night to tell me. I told her to go to bed, since she's still in high school and needed to get a good night's sleep. I thought for sure there would be pictures of baby goats on my phone when I woke up in the morning. Instead I woke up to my worst nightmare.

As of the next morning, eight hours later, the goat still hadn't kidded. My sister called me in a panic. I had no choice but to skip my morning college classes and rush home (a three hour drive) because I was the only one brave enough and with the experience to try and deliver the baby myself, in the off chance we couldn't get a vet appointment.

The three hour drive home was agony. What was worse was that my mom had dropped our livestock trailer off with the farmer we buy our hay from a few days prior, and there were 56 square bales of hay in it, each weighing more than 50lbs/25kg apiece. Immediately upon arriving home, I grabbed a large plastic glove that went up to my armpit, the small bottle of obstetrical lubricant we keep on hand, and some surgical scrub to use as a disinfectant. After tying the doe to the fence, I rubbed the lubricant on her vaginal opening and stuck my hand inside. Best I could tell, she was carrying twins, and they were massive. The first one felt breech. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to manipulate the stuck baby to get him to come out. We needed to take the goat to the vet.

My mom had gone to pick up the trailer when I told her I was close to being home. As soon as my hand left the doe, she was pulling up next to the barn where we stack hay. I helped her unload and stack all 56 bales in less than an hour, which was no easy feat. I was thanking my lucky stars I don't skip my arms at the gym. When the hay was unloaded, we got the tired, frightened doe to the vet. He did what I couldn't, and successfully delivered the twins: a baby boy and girl. Both were miraculously born alive, after at least 16 hours of labor. As of the writing of this blog post, both babies are still alive. The baby boy was born with a swollen face and severe neck and head pain from being stuck for so long. He was the one stuck in the birth canal, and as a result had developed something like a concussion in humans. But, all things considered, he could have been dead. He has been healing slowly over the past couple of days, and we've been doing gentle physical therapy with him. Before, he had been slow to stand and unable to raise his head more than a few inches from the ground. Now, only two days later, he can raise his head level with his back and drink his mother's milk on his own.

This particular story had a happy ending, but it easily couldn't have. The entire three hour drive home to help my mom, I cried off and on because I was worried for the mother goat, and didn't even want to think about losing her. In short, I had compassion for her, and I couldn't bear think about her suffering. My animals are like members of my own family. I would have been very upset if she or her babies had died. Childbirth is a horrible way to go.

I've had people online tell me that I'm an abusive rapist because I raise animals who go on to have owners who breed them for meat production. Boer goats are meat goats. To animal rights activists, I am not only a rapist. I am a murderer. The mere fact that I own them and call myself a farmer means I am abusive, according to animal rights activists. Unfortunately, these activists tend to look at livestock animals through rose colored glasses. That might sound odd to some reading this, as we've all seen their hateful smear videos that come from questionable sources. We've all heard someone say something negative about the "cramped, dirty conditions" on factory farms. How could these ARAs be looking at livestock through rose colored glasses if these are their opinions?

Simple. They tend to anthropomorphize the animals and look at them the same way they would a human, which is a flaw. They believe all animals want to be left to their own devices, without human intervention. They even believe that assisting with animal births is wrong. It sounds hard to believe, but they would honestly rather the baby just rot inside the mother, leading to both maternal death and death of the offspring. I'm not kidding. They actually think this. Here's proof:

I've addressed this particular social media post before in an open letter, which you can read here. Not very compassionate, is it? They've never lost an animal before because of problems giving birth. It's heartbreaking. Last year, my farm had a mother goat who had problems similar to the ones that occurred in our recent success story. She, too, went to the vet. Only this doe died of internal bleeding from a uterine rupture. Not only that, but we lost her baby too. She had only been in labor for  about 4 hours (which is too long for a goat, even though it's not too long for cows. I've seen a mother goat pop out twins in less than 30 minutes, and even first time does should only take about two hours). If my doe and her miracle twins had been in the hands of animal rights activists, there's no doubt in my mind they would have let her die for the sake of not wanting to reach inside her and assist with the birth, especially in light of the social media post above. I'm not sure whether it's scarier that the organization above actually believes what my vet did was bad, or that 6,465 people actually liked the post.

I'm not alone in saying that this is by far the best way you can tell farmers care about their animals and take their welfare very seriously. I was a nervous wreck when I found out the goat was having trouble. The organization above would have just let her die. I'll leave you with a cute picture of the newborn babies and their mother, and you can check my social media for updates by clicking on the green icons below. Thanks for reading!

I'm a full-time college student at Texas A&M University, where I'm in the process of getting my Animal Science degree, with eventual aspirations of becoming an ag teacher. I grew up around animals, and currently manage an operation that breeds show-quality boer goats for 4H and FFA exhibitors. My family also raises commercial cattle in south Texas, where I also worked in cotton farming.