Wow! Discrepancy in newborn size/weights

[TF3]

My mostly FG litter born on Thursday night were weighed and measured today.
There are 7.

Their lengths ranged from 9-12 cm (3.5" to 4.75")
which seems reasonable in relation to each other.

But the weights?
A couple are 100 g (3.5 oz),
3 are in the 50-75 g range,
but one is 25 g and one is only 12 g (0.4 oz) ??! :x
They all appear to be the same in development etc. Just vastly different weights!
(and of course the one solid black, which is what I was hoping for, is the 12g runt! It did have a saggy tummy so got a little one on one with mom)


Is that an unusually wide difference?

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

I never weighed like that or anything but I would say from the pic that having a runt like that with a few fatties is pretty average from my experience.

 

[BlueHaven]

Just asking, do the runts usually catch up, or are they always small.?

 

[3mina]

Sometimes they catch up, sometimes they die

 

[katiebear]

I have a runt in my three week old litter, he was a little smaller than the rest but now he is half the size of the others... :shock: Mom seems to be trying to ween already, he eats pellets and oats and bermuda hay.( its all we have around here)..He seems healthy so we are still feeding him, :roll: probably going to be a pet...hubby said to grow him out to butcher...but he is so small I don't think he will make 5 lbs...ever...

 

[Miss M]

I get litters like that. The runts usually catch up for me, if they survive... which a lot of them do. They take a while to catch up, but they usually get there.

 

[TF3]

Thanks!
Our previous litter has a runt and he is about 1/3 the size of the others but has grown well and at the same rate as the others, he is just overall smaller-- but you really couldn't have picked him out in the first weeks.
I hope this little one gains ground-- I wanted s black!!

 

[Rainey]

I'm still trying to figure out how to choose "keepers". So what about the size variation in a litter? Does it tend to be consistent for a given doe? The doe we won't be breeding again because she lost one whole litter and only kept 4 of 11 the second time had very different sized kits. We joked that she had some teats that just gave cream, some skim milk and some 2%. The doe we started with last year had very little difference in the number per litter or the size of the kits in the litter. So if you're choosing kits to keep and breed, do you want one that grew very fast but the littermates didn't? or the best from a more even litter? or doesn't it matter in choosing keepers?

 

[TF3]

I'm just learning too, Rainey!

Day 4 weigh in--
Mama must be serving cream (she kept 10 full last time so 7 is a snap!).
My day two 12g and 25g kits are 95 g today!
All the rest are 100-120g.
Which means all the smaller ones gained much more than the biggest and the weight range has narrowed significantly.