I'm getting pretty excited about my Icelandic lambs due soon. I have 3 pregnant ewes - 2 due due April 27 and one on May 2.
Here's Oreo. I think she might be the first to go.
Lambs due in 9 days!
Here's her udder - she's leaking already. She's a bit lopsided which is odd. I hope she fills out properly. Last year she had quads. Multiple births are very common in Icelandics. I am hoping for twins or trips though, because quads are hard on the mom and often don't all make it.
Here's Clover - she is due April 27 also. She is very wide and her udder is huge. She's with our white ewe lambs Calypso and Clipper here. Look at her baby bump on the right side. Huge!!
She's a friendly ewe, and she looks kind of like a dalmatian when sheared!
And here's KitKat, due May 2, big as a house! Luna our young goat likes to hang around with KitKat.
Last year KitKat had twins.
Anybody want to guess total number of lambs and # of ewes/rams?!
I guess 7 babiez... no clue what sex..
Calypso and Clipper are getting big way too fast!!! I am shocked at how "mature" they look already!
Luna is just huge!
Don't they look just misrable?
Now, after looking at your fat cows (said in fun) I don't think my orange is ready at all.. we don't have a date for her.. and her milk hasn't come in.. but she is walking around arching and pushing.. I know something IS going on.. I do hope she is not trying to abort. I rounded her up and put her in sick-bay.. shes mad.. I will probably induce her just because of my man-made stress.. My child tells me to leave them all be... animals will figure it out on their own, as they have for millions of years before us.
You have such a nice assortment their Claire.. could you ever narrow down to one breed you could not give up, or is it still to early to tell?
oops, forgot to add the pic
Can't wait to see all the new babies!
Oreo looks udderly hugh.
Mox, when you first started this thread I thought you were writing a song. used to do do. Hay
That is udderly funny great uncle!!
How exciting. And I thought eggs in the bator were exciting. I dont think my heart could take it. That will be a BIG launch!!! hehehe :D
Fran - they do look kind of miserable sometimes, as if they are saying "Oh please hurry up and come out!"
In fact, they waddle a bit with their back legs because their udders are pressing out on their back legs so that must be uncomfortable.
Now as for your Orange, it's really hard to tell because she isn't shorn yet. The arching and stretching is very normal in a pregnant goat. When I was getting ready for Luna's birth (pygmy goat), I read up a lot about it and the sources all said that they will stretch/arch a lot and even rub along the fence and such because they are positioning the baby or they are trying to get more comfortable - I suppose like a pregnant woman but I have no experience with that!
Second, she probably has a long way to go if there is no sign of udder. When you say her milk hasn't come in, do you mean that you just can't get anything out, or that there is no udder swelling at all? If her udder is firming up, that is good. There is a "plug" in the teats that you should leave in place (i.e. don't try to hand milk her) because that prevents mastitis and also keeps her from leaking that important colostrum that the babies need.
Stuffin's udder got really big before Luna was born, but the day before it got bigger than I thought it could, and what I noticed was that it sort of filled out towards the back, so that if she was sideways, you could see a bulge of udder pushing out between her legs, as if she had a balloon under her.
The biggest sign of all, though, is the tail ligaments. If you feel above her tail, you should feel these two ligaments, almost like little pencils, on each side there is one, and they are firm and on a kind of diagonal. When she is getting ready to birth, those ligaments will soften, and you will not be able to feel them at all any more. I was amazed with that on Stuffin - they completely disappeared. It was a very noticeable and significant change.
Do you have a due date (rough?) on her?
Haystack - I think you should write the song!
Sewincircle - It is udderly amazing and exciting to have baby lambs on the way. I don't know how to occupy myself until the 27th. Oh yeah, I guess I do have work, and school, and...and...and....
somebody send me some clippers!
Thanks for the info Claire, I now agree, we have a ways to go.. I meant there is no udder, not no milk coming out.
I was scared because of the intense tummy and rear clipping we did and some that left her pretty raw, then suddenly she was arching and rubbing. The rest of the "signs" are X-rated so I will discuss them with you in a d-mail. Which is too bad, beacuse so many folks could learn and not panick like I have.
The goats came Feb 19, I have no clue when she was bred.
Probably the arching and rubbing after the clipping was sort of a response because the clipping might have made her feel itchy or different or something like that. If there is no udder swelling, I'd say you're not particularly close. Stuffin's udder got puffy (like a little cushion) about a month before, and slowly grew. I will get back to your dmail a bit later, but not to worry about those signs.
And about the 9 days until lambing for me....welll.....Oreo decided otherwise!
Two ram lambs born this morning!!!
Lamb #2!
Just a little bundle of legs!
oh.... lamb #1 has to come here... awwwwwwwwwwww pweeeese...
Moxon
awwwwwwww How cute ! They are marked cute also..they look little bandido's .....LOL congrats.....Karen
Fran - if the lamb comes to you, the mom has to come too! He needs his milkshakes!
Pinkpanther - thanks!! They do look like little bandidos! Never thought of that! Their mom has the eye patches too. They really take after her, and they don't have any sign of their Dad's coloring. This is their Dad.
ok, on my way!
Hey, you got the "Evil Clown" pattern! LOL. That's not an official name or anything, but someone came up with that last year on the isbona list. I think they also said their lambs had black around their nose too, but definitely the black eye patches.
The sire is a moorit and carries spotting. So your little rams are black with white spotting and carry moorit.
Oh how cute! Lil Bandit.. snuggly bandit babiez!!!
Okay.. now for Clover to have her two and Kitkat to have her 3.. LOL
Congratulations Claire! They are adorable!!!!!!!
They are cutieputootie ninja lambs for sure. Names? and speaking of huge LOOK at little Luna!!! She grewed LOTS!
awwe.. ninja lambs with their light bulbs on.. lol
ellllll ZORRO!
Thanks all! They are doing well and I have seen them nursing so that's a good sign! They already have large horn buds too. Kelly gets to name them because they are boys (I name the farm girl babies, he names the boys). Ninja and Zorro would be funny.
Gallesfarm - how can you tell that the sire carries spotting? I'm still learning about the genetics. Since the mom also has spotting, how do we know that he carries it and that they didn't just get it from her? Or, if he was homozygous for moorit (I don't even know if that's a trait that can be homozygous) then would the moorit have been dominant over the spotting? I am hoping that KitKat, who is moorit, has moorit lambs out of Thunder.
Luna HAS grown, and here's her favorite game now. Every time I bend down in the farm yard.
She likes to chew my pony tail too, if she can.
Oh that is so cute Claire! Does it hurt? I bet you just melted the first time she did that!! I know I would..
I have a lil blue Modern Game Bantam Roo that jumps on my arm or lap every time I go out.. today it was staring at me right in the eye so close I had to go cross eyed to see it! Then it pecked my earring and got on my shoulder.. pecking around in my hair.. I was getting the chilly willies and laughing my head off.. just wanna squeeze em|!
For Icelandics, there are 2 colors: black and moorit. There are 5 patterns: white, grey, badgerface, mouflon, and solid. And there is a spotting gene. So, there are three different genes that all come into play in deciding what color a sheep is.
Black is dominant to moorit. A black sheep can be homozygous black (two copies), or heterozygous (one black copy, one moorit). A moorit sheep is always homozygous.
White is dominant to all other patterns. One copy of the gene for white pattern will give you a heterozygous white sheep, with any of the other patterns being the second copy. Or of course you can have a homozygous white pattern sheep.
Grey, badgerface, and mouflon are co-dominant, but all are dominant to solid, so for example one copy of grey, and one solid will give you a grey pattern sheep. Same for badgerface or mouflon. So these three patterns will show whether the animal is homozygous or heterozygous (unless the other copy is white). You can also have combos of any two of these patterns, so grey badgerface, grey mouflon, or badgerface mouflon are also possibilities. Solid, being recessive, needs two copies to show.
Spotting is recessive to non-spotted, or think of it as "off" or "on". You need two copies to show spotting ("on"). Since the dam here is spotted you know that she has two copies, and therefore had to pass one on to her offspring. The other could only have come from the sire. He's moorit solid, but must be carrying spotting.
The only Icelandic sheep that you can determine the genetics of just by looking at it would be a moorit solid spotted sheep, because all of those traits are recessive and require two copies to show up. The sire to your ram lambs is homozygous for moorit and solid, but heterozygous for spotting.
Hope that's not too confusing!
Karen
Just to add to the confusion, you can have a white pattern sheep that is also spotted. White pattern does allow "phaeomelanin" to be expressed, giving a sort of light reddish-tan color here and there, but spotting completely turns off any color, so spotted sheep are brilliantly white where the spotting is expressed.
So, just to be clear on the color of spotting, because it's easy to get confused.... we tend to look at pictures like those of your ram lambs, and our brains say "it's a white sheep with black spots". But actually, they are black sheep with white spots, except that the white spotting is covering a good part of their bodies. Spotting is always white.
Is Thunder the moorit ram from the picture? If so, all lambs out of KitKat will be moorit. If Thunder is your white ram, and he's homozygous white, all the lambs will be white, but carry moorit from KitKat. If he's heterozygous white, anything could happen. I won't go there unless you want me to (and we're talking about the right ram ;-).
Karen
Thanks Karen - that was great! Not confusing - fortunately I have a masters in plant molecular biology & genetics, so it's just applying the same principles in animals rather than plants. It has made me curious about the dark eye rings that Bianca has (she is all white otherswise) and which she passed on to Calypso. In the picture below, you can probably see the dark eye ring - just her immediate eye area, not the fleece, is dark.
Is that a spotting thing, or is that just something else? Bianca has the same eyes, but not her other baby, Clipper. Their father is white all over, no eye ring. I am wondering if it means that Bianca and Calypso are carriers of the spotted gene but it is just barely expressed in them. Makes me wonder about what would come out if she was bred to Thunder.
So my moorit, Kitkat, bred to Thunder, also moorit, but spotted carrier, could not possibly have white lambs, because neither she nor Thunder have the white pattern....because that would be dominant and since neither is white, it's out of the question. Is that right? So, not knowing the rest of their heritage, but knowing he at least carries spotted, they should be moorit lambs without any of the other patterns (because both parents appear to be solid moorit) , and possibly including spotting but in any case spotting carriers.
My other ewe is dalmatian spotted so I have no idea what's coming out there!
Oops! We cross posted. I think my KitKat theory is right then.
Thunder is the moorit pictured below. Blizzard is my white ram. I don't own Thunder, he's the ram on the farm that Oreo, KitKat & Clover came from. They got him from Tongue River.
Ooops, forgot Thunder pic.
Oh gosh, are you lucky! You are getting lambs by one of Susan Briggs' rams! Lorraine must have gotten him at the dispersal sale. Congratulations! Yes, they will be all moorit solid lambs, and may carry spotting. And you are right, you cannot get white lambs out of a breeding of two moorit sheep.
On the eye-ring question, can you post pictures of Bianca? If she is all white with just black color in in the skin around her eyes, she's probably a white pattern sheep where the white is not perfectly expressed. That often happens. I have an ewe that has a black patch right under her tail. She is a white pattern sheep, but the black is peeking through at that point. Think of it as a "hole in her pajamas". :-)
Karen
Yes, Lorraine is very excited about Thunder and is anxious to see what lambs she (and I) get from him. He's a beauty!
Here is Bianca - you can see the eye rings, and a tiny bit of spotting around her nose, and a light spot on one ear, but otherwise all white. She looks a bit rough in this pic - it's about 2 minutes after shearing! She had not been sheared in a full year, so she was a bit yellowed underneath. The spots by her rear leg are just dirt!
Oh, she also has a bit of "eye goop" in that last picture that makes it look like the dark comes down away from her eyes, but it doesn't.
Here she is in "pretty" mode!
Yep, she's a white pattern sheep. Those flecks of black are normal to see. Nice horns!
Thanks! I wish I could register her. We believe, but are not sure, that she came originally from someone named Patricia Hamilton, who had a number of them, and possibly sold them to the guy we bought them from. The guy who sold them to us was having a hard time with his farm and had water cut off due to some fight with the neighbor (they were sharing water). We got these three pictured from him - Blizzard the ram in front, Bianca in the middle, and Flurry behind. They are very clearly full Icelandic and he originally had 5 but two were killed by 3 Saint Bernard dogs who got loose and got into his pasture. Anyway, he did not have any paperwork that he could find, although he thought he had some at some point. No tattoos. Sigh. They are all really nice looking sheep.
CONGRATS!!! THEY ARE JUST BEAUTIFUL! I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU!!!
They look soooo soft. I am with frans. I will offer free babysitting. (but you have to bring them to my house) hehehe :D (they may never leave though) LOL