Three weeks of babies

It’s been three weeks with the little ones! Of the 11 born, 10 have survived and weaned (actually weaned quite early, around day 13, as momma seemed to be well and truly exhausted from the experience).

Overall the litter has 2 agouti girls, one mink-hooded girl, 6 various hooded and bareback beige girls and one hooded beige male.

For a note on genetics, statistically the outcome for a female carrying a single dominate agouti gene (Aa) and a male that doesn’t carry it (aa) says about 25% of babies should be agouti. This litter is definitely in that expected ballpark.

After this litter I’ve decided that their dam (mocha) won’t be bred again, she became quite underweight after birth and struggled a lot to keep up with lactation and care of the entire litter and at the end of weaning was looking quite frazzled. I needed to offer soy milk once the babies were confident with drinking themselves to encourage their weight to continue increasing as expected.

Given that, I’m going to want to watch the rest of this litter carefully as they mature to decide if I want to continue this line. I won’t breed any more litters from this line until I have more data and see how they develop and make sure it’ll be safe for any does. There is risk of lactation issues with lines, and this may be the case here. Either way, exciting to see the little ones!