The Miracle of Birth
SEPTEMBER 1, 2007 Listen to this Story
- The Miracle of Birth
- View the Slideshow
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In Minnesota, the biggest summer festival is the State Fair. Fried cheese curds, pork-chop-on-a-stick, giant turkey legs... the food options are endless. And for urban folks, it's one of the few times to see farm animals up close and personal. It gets really personal if you wander into the State Fair's Miracle of Birth Center. The exhibit is the fair's most popular attraction. It's filled with expectant cows, sows, chickens and sheep who give birth before your very eyes if you hang around long enough. Minnesota Public Radio's Annie Baxter did, and boy does she have tales to tell.
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Picture a very public maternity ward in a big exhibition hall. Towards the back, cows feed their newborn calves in straw filled stalls. Off to the left and in the middle, sheep nurse their lambs. And then, just right of center, a big female pig sits in a kind of tank made of glass and metal bars.
She's going into labor. So she's rattling around a bit, clamping her teeth on the bars. A dense crowd has formed around the pig. Some people flank the pig's tank, and others watch from a set of bleachers looking down onto the scene. A man wielding a microphone stands over the sow, calling out play by plays on how her labor is unfolding.
"She has settled down now," he says, "earlier today she was up and about, going through a kind of nesting procedure. So we think we're getting closer."
At least one witness seems to feel bad about crowding in for a peek: "Nobody should have to go through this in public"
But that visitor lingers on, hoping that if she sticks around long enough, she'll get to see the sow's little baby piglets arrive. This is a day in the life of the Miracle of Birth Center, where dozens of animals give birth, for your eyes to see, during the Minnesota State Fair.
If it sounds strange, well, it is. But on the farm, birth and death are much more present in daily life. And the purpose of the center is to bring city dwellers and suburbanites a step closer to those natural cycles.
"I think, you know, it's a basic human interest in new life and new birth. It's a very simple attraction," says veterinarian Florian Ledermann. He helped started the center seven years ago. They always wanted this to be a birthing center, but in the first year, they made the mistake of trying to interest people with veterinary talk.
"We tried to make it more complicated. We had demonstrations about different things about animals on the farms. It never had the attraction a birth does, and the moment there's a birth going on, people stop dead in their tracks. They want to see it."
The births rerun on big television screens hanging from the rafters all over the Miracle of Birth Center. They play a "best of" selection of births from last year's Fair. Organizers came up with the idea after studying birthing centers at other state fairs.
In one of the scenes, a couple of vets fasten chains to the hooves of a calf and yank it out of its mother. But when there's real action, the screens go blank. The pig that's in labor looks ready to go. A cameraman rushes over and zooms in on the pig's genitals. The image fills the monitors.
The crowd around the pig's tank presses in closer. And all of a sudden, a piglet emerges.
"It's a nice three pound pig," says the MC. "The kind of size we like to see."
A contingent of retirees snap out their cameras.
"I'm from New York City," one says. "You don't see too many of this."
Even for the vets who oversee the births, curiosity may not subside. For Ledermann, when a birth happens, he's just like the visitors. He can't take his eyes away.
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- Music Bridge:
- Jeden Tag
- Artist: Hausmeister
- CD: Water-Wasser (Plop)
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