New Arrival: Twilight

Today I went down to Michelle Chandler's Blessed Acre Farm to pick up our 4th breeder, an American Blue doe named Twilight. Between that and the rest of what is going on today the post is obviously a little delayed today. Below you can see Twilight investigating her new hutch.

We have actually as of yesterday re-positioned the hutches and part in parcel of that was moving Umbra over. Twilight is in his old hutch, and Umbra is now on the end on the West side, with private space shading his hutch against the setting sun. On hot days his position ended up being more of an issue than we expected it to be. We hadn't anticipated the Western setting sun to be an issue, but at the tail end of a long hot day he was in more serious distress than the others. With the new hutch positioning that will give him shade in the evening to keep him from having as much trouble. If he continues to have serious troubles then we will probably have to figure out a way to provide a fan to keep air moving through his hutch more than it already does.
Above and Left you can see Twilight investigating her new hutch thoroughly. She found the food rather rapidly, but I'm not certain how well she will take to the water bottle given that she is used to having a dish. To make sure she won't have issues while I am out all day today I left her a crock with water in it. While none of the pictures I was able to take with my phone are very good conformation shots she was easy to pick from her sisters. First of all, she is the largest and most mature of her siblings indicating that she has probably overall been the fastest growing. I'm not certain yet whether faster growing and larger does produce litters that do the same, but it seemed a good thing to choose.

The second thing is that compared to her siblings she has a large rounded back end. This is good for a few reasons. First, it is an indication that she is less likely to have difficulty bearing kits because her pelvis is substantial. It is also a breed trait as the American Blue should have a "mandolin shaped" body which means they have more meat on them in comparison to ones with leaner haunches.

It is difficult to see just how much smaller Twilight is than any of the other Does, but she is only a few months old. She will not be ready for breeding for some time as she grows out to full breeding age, size, and weight. Right now her face is narrower, her body slimmer, and her overall size is lower. As she grows she will look more and more in shape like Dawn.

I finally managed to get a good shot of Sunny with most of her brood. In the shot to the Right she is watching over her litter eating the hay that was recently put down. What we need to get a photo of now is the three white babies side by side to show the difference between them. One of them has a black nose and graying ears, the other two are just pure white and showing no signs of having the Californian markings. The Lady of the House explained the genetics of it to me this morning, but I think it would be best to have her do a genetics post explaining overall genetics, and then explain the situation than for me to mangle the explanation.



Weight Charts

Dawn's Litter
    5/03    5/04     5/05     5/06     5/06         5/07   5/08    5/09     5/10     5/11     5/12      5/13    5/14
1:  71       80        89        87       Weights   103     113     125      133      148      158       158     167
2:  67       75        80        84       At            91      110     119      116      133      144       153     158
3:  65       73        77        84       Death       91      101     110      113      123      130       129     156
4:  65       66        68        75                       88      100     106      110      112      121       128     140
5:  54       56        58        62                       75      100     103      102      109      110       110     132
6:  54       52        55        60                       62      70       71        78        90        106       101     105
7:  52       49        50        52       46
8:  49       48        46        50       43

    5/15   5/16    5/17   Prediction 5/21   5/21   5/22    5/23    5/24   5/26   5/27   5/28   5/29  5/30  5/31
1: 180    189     192                      222    248     289    283     293    307    339    424    437   457   506
2: 178    182     191                      221    244     270    280     288    267    338    368    407   430   488
3: 175    176     182                      202    226     247    253     274    238    365    364    402   423   475
4: 163    163     170                      190    221     225    250     266    235    337    362    400   412   461
5: 145    134     136                      156    177     191    198     209    234    264    293    326   352   396
6: 116    124     135                      150    167     183    190     207    214    263    287    312   335   382

    6/01  6/02  6/03  6/04  6/05  6/06  6/07
1: 544   565   548   642   682   732   780
2: 515   545   540   619   678   711   735
3: 508   536   538   603   660   698   724
4: 499   534   535   587   648   676   714
5: 435   523   456   545   583   620   640
6: 409   445   442   519   558   595   624

Since last week on 5/31 #6 has gained 242 grams for a whopping %63 increase in body mass from the 382 grams it weighed on 5/31. #1 has gained 274 grams since 5/31 for a %54 increase in body mass from the 506 grams it weighed on 5/31. That absolutely amazed me that they had gained such a percentage of their body mass in a single week. The Lady of the House is correct that I should do regular body mass increase numbers as they are probably a more useful measure than simply how many grams they have gained.

Sunny's Litter

    5/14  5/15  5/16  5/17   5/21  5/22    5/23   5/24   5/26   5/27   5/28   5/29  5/30  5/31  6/01  6/02
1: 65     65     71     92      134    163     164    167    188    198    208    212   225   237  249   265
2: 60     60     71     91      133    156     163    165    187    197    202    208   223   237  248   259
3: 57     58     68     89      131    155     156    164    182    196    201    208   222   237  248   254
4: 56     58     67     88      129    146     152    163    181    191    200    207   222   227  240   253
5: 55     58     62     83      125    145     151    160    179    191    197    207   219   226  239   252
6: 55     57     60     79      125    144     147    158    177    188    197    204   217   226  239   245
7: 53     56     58     78      121    139     143    158    176    183    194    199   200   223  236   242
8: 47     49     56     67      110    114     127    132    152    162    175    181   199   216  219   236

    6/03  6/04  6/05  6/06  6/07
1: 276   293   321   360   389
2: 275   291   310   345   371
3: 274   291   310   340   367
4: 264   283   305   335   364
5: 263   281   303   334   364
6: 263   281   303   333   363
7: 248   267   290   315   345
8: 246   262   288   311   340

#1 of Sunny's babies has grown 152 grams since last week on 5/31 coming out to a 64% increase in body mass in one week. #8 has grown 124 grams for a 57% increase in body mass since last week. I find interesting that for Sunny the largest is growing fastest compared to Dawn's where the smallest has been growing fastest in the last week. I wonder if that is a function of how many mouths there are to area to feed in for Sunny's litter. The feeding area is the same in both hutches, but Sunny's litter is 2 larger.

I hope to do more analysis of the weight charts for Tuesday, but with the new job I will be seeing how much time I have to actually work on the blog, so we will see.