Hi all. I've been absent for a while..."farming" has been keeping us pretty busy. Season's pretty much over now so I hope to be around more often. I've missed y'all!
We have SF...I wanted to go with a heritage breed, and they were available locally. We started with a trio and bred the two does at the same time. About day 32 I went out to find one of the does dead in the nest box with 2 dead kits on the wire...it was a dreadful blow! Next day, the other doe had 3 squirmy kits in the nest box. One didn't make it but the other 2 were fine and grew like weeds. My attempt at sexing them as babies seems to have gone awry however...what I thought was 2 does seems to have been one of each. It's just now getting light out and they're old enough now that even I should be able to figure it out, LOL. Gonna head out shortly to make sure.
A few months ago, we acquired a couple of mutt does from a gal who was moving and couldn't take them along. One was overly cranky and liked to bite so...we bit her back and she was tasty. The other is not exactly cuddly but keeps her teeth to herself so we kept her. We'd originally planned to breed her to our buck but she's tiny in comparison...not a dwarf or anything but probably 3 lbs while the buck is closer to 10. I was worried about her having kits too big to birth.
We decided to give it a go though and on Aug 15, we put both girls in with the buck and let him have a go at 'em. September 15, the little doe had 7 babies!! All in the nest, covered with plenty of fur and healthy and squirmy. We gave the SF doe another week, but...nothing...she'd missed.
10 days later the 7 are energetic in the extreme and have open eyes and ears; they're growing like weeds. That little doe is a suburb mommy, and it's her first litter, too! They're running around and eating pretty much whatever we put in there and poor Mama...she can't seem to ingest enough to satisfy her, LOL. We plan to pull the nest box today since they're pretty much never in it and their fur is long and full. Since they're eating so well, we're thinking of moving them away from mama in a week or so. That'll put them at 5 weeks...that should be okay for weaning, don't you think?
It'll be interesting to see how they size out. If they get to a decent size by about 4 months, we may well breed the doe again. Otherwise, probably not since I don't want to have tiny ones that have to be fed for months and months to get to good eating size. Must be something to the notion of hybrid vigor though...so far, this little mutt has done much better than our purebreds have. But it's early days yet.
We have SF...I wanted to go with a heritage breed, and they were available locally. We started with a trio and bred the two does at the same time. About day 32 I went out to find one of the does dead in the nest box with 2 dead kits on the wire...it was a dreadful blow! Next day, the other doe had 3 squirmy kits in the nest box. One didn't make it but the other 2 were fine and grew like weeds. My attempt at sexing them as babies seems to have gone awry however...what I thought was 2 does seems to have been one of each. It's just now getting light out and they're old enough now that even I should be able to figure it out, LOL. Gonna head out shortly to make sure.
A few months ago, we acquired a couple of mutt does from a gal who was moving and couldn't take them along. One was overly cranky and liked to bite so...we bit her back and she was tasty. The other is not exactly cuddly but keeps her teeth to herself so we kept her. We'd originally planned to breed her to our buck but she's tiny in comparison...not a dwarf or anything but probably 3 lbs while the buck is closer to 10. I was worried about her having kits too big to birth.
We decided to give it a go though and on Aug 15, we put both girls in with the buck and let him have a go at 'em. September 15, the little doe had 7 babies!! All in the nest, covered with plenty of fur and healthy and squirmy. We gave the SF doe another week, but...nothing...she'd missed.
10 days later the 7 are energetic in the extreme and have open eyes and ears; they're growing like weeds. That little doe is a suburb mommy, and it's her first litter, too! They're running around and eating pretty much whatever we put in there and poor Mama...she can't seem to ingest enough to satisfy her, LOL. We plan to pull the nest box today since they're pretty much never in it and their fur is long and full. Since they're eating so well, we're thinking of moving them away from mama in a week or so. That'll put them at 5 weeks...that should be okay for weaning, don't you think?
It'll be interesting to see how they size out. If they get to a decent size by about 4 months, we may well breed the doe again. Otherwise, probably not since I don't want to have tiny ones that have to be fed for months and months to get to good eating size. Must be something to the notion of hybrid vigor though...so far, this little mutt has done much better than our purebreds have. But it's early days yet.
I hope she does really well for you!
