Out of 7 babies (5 litters) I have 2 keepers. These are both out of Lil' Bit Farms LB92 (broken otter), different dams.
Broken Otter buck, out of Lady Blaque (broken black), about 5 wks. I have high hopes for this guy, but he might go too heavy like his sire which will shorten his show career.
Broken Otter doe, out of Foxy Lady (broken chestnut), about 4 wks. Future show doe for sure. She's quite a bit smaller than the buck so I'm not worried about her going overweight. She's also the only doe out of all those litters. Dang.
LB's scorecard is looking real good. He is proving to throw his clean pattern consistently. Yay. That's one of the reasons I bought him. There's also a broken black self brother to the buck with the same pattern. The doe's litter (she was the only live kit) included a dilute broken that also had good pattern. Yay Yay. I needed this.
Both Lady Blaque and Foxy Lady have fairly clean blanket patterns, as does LB. Lady's is pretty heavy (what I consider over 50%), and Foxy's is more striped and within limits. All the broken kits have showable pattern and there was only 1 charlie-mark. When I bred LB to Infinite Detail who has a lighter spot pattern, there was a solid blue and a charlie. The only decent pattern was on 2 peanuts (of course it was). That didn't work out very well for me, but might be worth repeating to see if I get usable results. So far I've only bred him to 1 solid doe and while type is promising, there were no brokens at all. He may mesh best with broken mates.
He carries self and dilute, and so far, throws more selfs than otters. That works for me. He's producing small offspring with a small doe, but bigger brood does like L.Blaque and I.Detail produced bigger kits that may not be showable after they reach mature weight. Like him.
Nestbox News:
1 new litter so far. Anaba x Camaro (himis) had hers yesterday. More about that in a minute. Dreamer x LB92 is pulling fur as I write this. I'm looking forward to this litter so I'm very glad she didn't kindle in the night. There's a few more due today and later this week. Reminds me. I have to move those other does into the shed today.
Anaba. This is Camaro's first litter. She missed the first time with him. Camaro was cleaning up the AOV group until his broken toe took him off the show string. Anaba is still my best himi doe who also had a successful show career. Needless to say, I can't wait to see how this litter turns out.
It's not often you get to watch a litter being born. Anaba gave me quite a show yesterday. I was out there most of the day working on the cage remodel. Almost finished, BTW. She began pulling fur early in the afternoon. I hoped that meant she would kindle before I closed up for the night. She did. On the wire. Right in front of me. She's experienced and had put the fur in the box, so I don't know why she dumped them on the wire. I whisked them into the box as soon as she seemed to be done with them. There's 2 kits and they are fine this morning.
The 3rd was a peanut which she ignored after it was dropped on the wire. This was interesting to watch. The kit hung from her mouth in the sac like in a sling as she chewed the sac. When she finally chewed through it, the kit dropped. It was still enclosed in most of the sac. It was alive at first, it moved a little but then it stopped. Maybe it suffocated in the sac? How lucky it was a peanut and not something I wanted. If it had been a viable kit, I would have tried to get the sac off myself, but since it wasn't, I left it there to see what she would do. It turned out I had to clean up the mess and the rest of the afterbirth left on the wire.
As I said, I'm almost finished with the cage remodel. I'm finishing up the buck/jr units now. Just in time. I'll move everybody into the shed when we start to get a lot of freezing nights. I expect that at the end of the month or so.
tnt
