Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Kateri

Kateri is the third mom due this year on our farm. She is due July 6, 2010. Just in time for a 4th of July fire-cracker!

They always seem to pose the best for a picture when they have spit lip:



Kateri is a light brown girl. Her 2 color genes are Brown and black (her mother is a true black, so she had to have gotten a black color gene from her mother, Kateri shows her lighter color, brown).

What is interesting about Kateri, is that she has had 3 cria - all girls, and none of them are solid colored. I would also like to point out that every one of them has won a 1st place ribbon at a level IV show! She is our best production female, you can't ask for more than what she has given us. I think she may be due for having a boy this year, but J wonders if maybe she's prone to having girls and may continue that trend. For the color, her first cria, Princess, was bay black, then, Tehya, a fading fawn, and lastly a dark rose grey (indefinite dark), Pocahontas. Kateri has grey on her back line, and some throughout her blanket. She has a lot of grey relatives in her ancestry, and her brother is grey. We wonder if maybe she is a poorly expressed rose grey. Or, maybe there is a variation gene that she passes onto her cria. I am very curious to see what color this year's cria is.

Kateri is bred to Express's Accoyo Adonis, from Autumn Alpacas. Adonis was a fading fawn as a juvenile, but after shearing, he turned white. I don't know what that means his primary color is, is he white or fawn? His mother is white and his father is medium fawn. I don't know their secondary color (I could figure it out given enough time with their lineage, but I haven't taken the time yet to do that). So, at least for now, I don't know Adonis' secondary color. Kateri is the first female he has been bred to, so we do not have any offspring records to look at. With a male, the offspring records are the quickest way to figure out their secondary gene color.

We have been expecting a white or fawn out of this breeding (basing this on likelihood, not actual facts of the color genes, so if the baby is not white or fawn, it means we need to actually research the color genes in Adonis' family tree). Adonis likely is white and fawn, and since the lighter color trumps the dark one, the white or fawn will trump Kateri's brown or black gene. I personally predict a fading fawn, since Kateri seems to have multiple color offspring. But we will see how this plays out. She could have a solid white one, or even one that starts as a fading fawn and ends up white like Adonis did.

For Kateri's cria, we have been using the theme of "Native American". Kateri is the name of a Mohawk princess. The first baby she had on our farm is actually her second cria, we named her Tehya, which is Native American for precious. When she was bred to Buccaneer, we wanted a name that meant outlaw (pirate) in Native American. We settled on Pocahontas for that one (she was after all a rebel of sorts). There are a ton of Native American names to pick from.

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