Saturday, April 4, 2009

Colostrum and blue eyes

As expected, Saphie did not have enough milk for all four kids.  I dug around in the freezer and found goat colostum from 2002 and sheep colostrum from last year.  I thawed both- the goat colostrum was like cheese but the sheep's looked normal.  So I fed the sheep colostrum to the kids that weren't getting enough- hopefully that will suffice in addition to what they are able to nurse from their mother.  Note to self- need to collect goat and sheep colostrum this year and put in freezer.

Another issue I am having is trying to determine who has blue eyes versus brown eyes.  It's been difficult with the low light conditions of the laundry room and then the barn.  I took these flash photos to see and they all seem to have blue eyes.  What do you all think?  To those not familiar with goat eye color genetics, it is autosomal dominant, but Saphie's dam appears to have brown eyes so she should be able to produce both blue and brown eyes.

The last issue of the day is how many kids are we going to have.  Check out the size of our pregnant does.
And check out how wide Saphie was yesterday morning before she had quads.
I am concerned there may be more bottle feeding in my future!

UPDATE- It is a sunny day, and I took each kid into the light, and they all have blue eyes.  Now statistically each kid has a 50-50% chance of having blue eyes, but Saphie has produced now a total of 6 kids all with blue eyes.

4 comments:

Rayna said...

Hahah, you can almost count the heads sticking about inside her tummy....Absolutely beautiful!

Donna said...

I am just worried it's too many head!

Michelle said...

Seems the year to flaunt statistics. I should have had 50% gulmogets from Franna's ram, but so far he has produced four out of five!

Donna said...

As long as they are flaunted for the better- usually it seems to go the other way- like with an abundance of ram lambs!

Shaun the Sheep "Off the Baa"

Shaun the Sheep clip "Save the Tree"