Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Alendil's surprise

This morning, Tim and I awoke to a surprise from Alendil.  She was due to birth anytime after tomorrow, but decided that this chilly 30 degree morning was perfect for lambing.  Tim hadn't realized that she had lambed until he was almost finished with the morning chores in the sheep pen.  He then spied Alendil in the llama pen with a lamb.

The surprising thing was that the baby is black.  Since she was bred to a brown based sheep, this helps us to identify the gene that she is hiding under her white and also lets us know what gene her mom is hiding. I'd since discovered that her mom had a brown gene, and now we know that she's got a black gene as well.

Luckily, another girl, which means we're now at 10 lambs with an even split of boys to girls.