Miracle of Birth

 

Miracle of Birth
by Dave Wright, DVM

“That was amazing.” exclaimed the doctor as he stepped into the office. “You’d have thought I just delivered Jesus Christ!” He filled a water bottle and took a sip. “I’ve assisted lots of deliveries, but never before hundreds of cheering fans.”

This is the way many volunteer veterinarians feel after assisting the deliveries of cows, pigs, and sheep at the Minnesota State Fair Miracle of Birth Center. The MOBC, as it is often called, is the most popular exhibit at the fair. While nearly two million people attend the Great Minnesota Get Together, it is estimated that half of them visit the MOBC. It is an opportunity for farmers and veterinarians to share the miraculous experience of live births with people who are often two generations removed from farm life and have never seen an animal being born.

As one of the veterinary co-chairs, I often join the other volunteers—veterinarians, veterinary students, FFA students, vet-techs, and industry representatives—to visit with our guests. I picked up a piglet that had been sleeping with a pile of napping siblings and sat on a stool.

A woman wearing emerald fingernails and a replica of the Crown Jewel reached for the piglet cradled in my arm. “Can I pet her?”

“Sure,” I said. I lifted the piglet’s tail to check its sex. “But it’s a boy—a boar.”

“Eew! A boar,” cried the horrified woman. Her gold bracelets jingled as she lifted her be-jeweled hand to her face. “That sounds so much like…a male.”

I raised my eyebrows but agreed. “That’s right. If it had been a girl, it would have been called a gilt.”

“Gilt—I like that better.” She looked over her shoulder at a friend standing behind her. “Let’s go see the cow.”

A young girl with curly blond hair and bright blue eyes squeezed into to the open space the woman had left. “What’s the piggy’s name?”

“Afraid I don’t know,” I said. “This piglet has sixteen brothers and sisters. The students who delivered him must have lost their creativity by the time number seventeen arrived. How about we call him Wilbur? Is that all right with you?”

The girl shook her head and reached out to touch him.

“Just remember to wash your hands,” I said.

The girl turned to her parents. “He’s so cute. Can we take him home? He could sleep with me.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said. “This little piglet weighs only a couple of pounds now, but in five and a half months it will weigh 285 pounds.”

The girl giggled and her eyes turned to saucers. “Wow. That’s big.”

The girl’s mom said, “I can’t believe that this piglet can grow that fast. I suppose farmers add all kinds of hormones to make that happen.”

“That’s a common misconception,” I said, “but no hormones are ever given to market pigs or poultry. If you read a label on a package of chicken or pork that says, No Hormones Added, it also must say, Federal regulations prohibit the use of hormones.”

“I’ll have to read the label more closely next time,” said the girl’s mom.

“Why is the mother in that stall?” said the girl’s dad. “She can’t even turn around.”

“This is called a farrowing stall. It’s designed to keep both the sow and her piglets safe and comfortable. Do you see the water dripping on the sow’s back? That helps to keep her cool. And these heat lamps keep the piglets warm.”

“Hmm,” said the man who sounded unconvinced.

I continued to explain. “I’ve been in veterinary practice for more than forty years. When I began my career in 1977, most of the sows gave birth in pens filled with straw—but we often lost half of the piglets in each litter. When the sows laid down, the piglets would crowd next to mamma hoping to stay warm—but then they’d be crushed. It was very sad. Back then, the average litter size was only seven or eight pigs per litter. This farm has several thousand sows, and they have an average litter size of seventeen pigs per litter—and they will only lose two to three percent before the piglets are weaned.”

“But I still like the idea of those quaint red barns,” said the little girl’s mom. “It’s a shame they’re all empty now.”

“I spent most of my career working in those little red barns,” I said. “I can tell you that the animals are better cared for nowadays in our modern farm buildings than they were back then. Do you see those calves over there?” I pointed to the dairy calves that were in individual pens in the corner of the MOBC. “If they had been born in those little red barns, most likely they would have been housed with other calves in a lean-to next to the cows.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Unfortunately, the ventilation in those barns was terrible. When I walked in, my glasses would steam up, I would choke on the smell of ammonia, and all I would hear is coughing calves. Many of those calves would need to be treated with antibiotics, just to keep them alive.”

The girl’s mom said, “But I want to buy meat from animals that have never been treated with antibiotics.”

“Did your daughter ever have to be treated for an ear infection or for Strep throat?” I asked.

“Yes, but I want to make sure that the antibiotics the doctor gave her were going to work. Doesn’t using antibiotics in animals cause resistance to the antibiotics we use in people?”

“That is a concern for all of us, but studies have shown that antibiotic use in animals pose a minimal risk to humans. Even so, farmers and veterinarians want to minimize the use of antibiotics and only use them if it is absolutely necessary. When those calves are housed in well-ventilated barns or placed in individual calf hutches away from the adult animals, they rarely get sick and never need antibiotics.”

“If an animal needs to be treated,” pursued the woman, “isn’t there still some antibiotic left in the animal?”

“Any time an antibiotic is used on a food-producing animal, there is a mandatory withdrawal time before the animal can go to market,” I explained. “As an additional safeguard, our meat is routinely tested at the plant for illegal residues.”

“What happens to the pig when it grows up?” asked the daughter.

“Then it will be ready to go to market.”

“Oh no,” said the child. Her smile vanished. “You mean it will die.”

“I’m afraid so,” I said, “just like all animals eventually die.” But then I added, “Do you like to eat bacon, or pork chops, or ham?”

The girl frowned, but hesitantly said, “Yes.”

“Well, all of these animals have a purpose,” I said as I pointed to different pens in the MOBC. “That is a dairy cow. She gives us milk to make cheese for your pizzas and ice cream for your dessert. Over there is a beef calf. He will grow up to give you hamburgers and steaks. That sheep will give you lambchops. And this pig will grow up to give you breakfast bacon, grilled pork chops, and your Easter ham.”

The family nodded and thanked me for the information. “Let’s look at another baby animal,” said the little girl.

I returned the piglet to her littermates and wandered over to the laying hen exhibit.

“Where’s the rooster?” said a man pushing a stroller with a sleeping child.

“No need for a rooster,” I said as I picked up a freshly laid egg from the wire grate and held it up for him to see. “This egg was a single cell only twenty-five hours ago. The hen that laid this egg turned a quarter pound of feed into an egg like this—complete with shell—in one day.”

“Amazing,” said the man, but knitted his brow and repeated, “But they don’t need a rooster?”

“Nope,” I said. “An egg does not need to be fertilized to grow into the eggs we eat. Cows and pigs ovulate once every twenty-one days. A woman ovulates every twenty-eight days, and these hens ovulate once a day.”

“Never thought of that,” said the man as he pointed to the hens in the enriched cage in front of him. “Is this what they call ‘cage free’?”

“No,” I said. “Our exhibit represents three types of housing.” I gestured to a small cage at one end of the display. “That is a conventional cage where the birds are more crowded—but the birds have quickly established their pecking order, and they stay clean and comfortable. The one you’re looking at is an enriched cage. There are more hens grouped together with more space, and they have amenities such as a perch, a nesting box, and a scratch pad. And there,” I said, pointing to the far end of the display, “is an example of cage-free housing. In a commercial cage-free setting, the birds are still raised in large barns, which may have a couple thousand birds mixed together, but they have the freedom to move around more.”

“You mentioned pecking order,” said the man. “I’ve heard of that.”

“Most animals establish a social order when they are in groups. As the name implies, birds will peck one another to establish dominance. In cage-free barns, the birds have the freedom to move around more, but they also have the freedom to fight with one another. There are fewer injuries and lower death loss in conventional caged housing than in cage-free housing. In free-range situations, where the birds are allowed outside on grass or dirt lots, there is the added risk of injury and death from predators. It’s also more likely that outdoor birds will be exposed to parasites and bacteria causing gut infections.”

“So, cage-free housing is not necessarily better than conventional housing?” he asked.

“It is important for consumers to have a choice in the food they purchase, but we hope that this exhibit offers them a more informed perspective as they do their shopping. You’ve probably noticed that cage-free eggs are more expensive than conventional eggs. That’s because it costs farmers about twice as much to produce eggs in that kind of housing.”

The man scratched his chin and thought for a moment. “Thanks for the information. That was really helpful.”

I’ve often thought that the MOBC exhibit would be a good place to begin a conversation about the facts of life with kids. Youngsters who grow up on farms are often privy to seeing their livestock mating, which inevitably leads to a discussion about where babies come from. Nowadays, few kids grow up on farms.

It's not our place to discuss the details of human procreation, but I found myself in that unenviable situation one evening just before closing. I was standing next to the pen where a cow was in the early stages of labor. She was lying down with her rear end a couple of feet from the gate. The cow strained and passed a small amount of fluid.

I felt a tug on my coveralls and a small voice asked, “What’s that?”

I looked down to see two brown eyes staring up at me through Coke-bottle lenses. She pushed her horn-rimmed glasses onto her nose as I knelt down beside her. “What’s what?” I asked.

“That.” She pointed to the cow’s rear end.

I looked around to find her parents. No one appeared to be paying attention to her question, so I plowed on. “That’s the cow’s vagina. The cow is going to deliver her baby calf through that little opening sometime soon.”

The girl wore a knee-length sleeveless dress. A polka dot band aid covered one knee and a freshly picked scab graced the other. She had muscular, tanned arms with hands that occasionally made a fist. I suspect she spent her free time picking fights with boys who wouldn’t let her play ball with them. The girl’s bangs hung over her forehead in a lopsided slant. “I like your haircut,” I said.

“Thanks. Did it myself,” she said proudly. “My bangs were bugging me.” She waited a moment before admitting, “Mom didn’t like it though.”

A bystander snickered and I smiled.

The girl turned her attention again to the cow. “How big is her baby?” she asked.

I countered her question with, “How much do you weigh?”

“Forty-five pounds,” she replied confidently.

“Well, her baby calf will probably weigh about twice as much as you do.”

The girl’s eyes got bigger yet. “That’s a lot. Where’s the baby now?”

“It’s in her mommy’s tummy—in a big muscular sac called a uterus. When the baby is ready to come out, the uterus contracts and pushes the baby out.”

“How can something that big squeeze through something that small?” asked the girl who put a foot on the lower bar and leaned against the gate.

“It is amazing that the opening can stretch that much,” I agreed. “It’s a miracle, and that’s why we call this place the Miracle of Birth Center.”

Then came the question I had been dreading: “How did the baby get in her mommy’s belly in the first place?”

“Maybe you should ask your parents,” I suggested as I looked around for help.

“I’ve asked ‘em,” she said. “I don’t think they know.”

“Oh? What makes you say that?”

“They tell me I’ve got a baby brother who’s supposed to be coming soon. They say he’s in mommy’s belly now—just like that cow’s—but every time I ask how he got in there, my dad says, ‘Go ask your mom,’ and mom says, ‘Go ask your dad.’ If I ask them both, they say, ‘You’re too young.’”

She looked me in the eye. “Maybe you can tell me.”

Where were her parents? Didn’t they want to defend themselves? I looked around. Anyone else care to take this one? All eyes were focused straight ahead, but I could sense they were waiting for my answer.

I dug a deeper furrow and pushed on. “All animals need a mommy and a daddy to make a baby animal. When they mate, a little cell called a sperm from the daddy meets up with a little cell from the mommy called an egg, and the combination grows into a baby animal.”

“Oh…,” said the girl, who was mulling over this idea.

“The Miracle of Birth Center will be closing in five minutes,” said a voice over the loudspeaker. Whew. Saved by the bell.

Another voice came over my shoulder. “Time to go, honey.”

I turned to see the smiling face of a young man next to a woman who was obviously pregnant.

“How’d I do?” I asked as my face colored.

“Just fine,” said the man.

The woman chuckled and turned to her husband. “School starts tomorrow with show and tell. We’d better answer any more of her questions before then.”

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