Meet our newest cria!

Sancha had her baby while we were gone at the National show. We aren't sure when exactly she had it. The baby was found on Saturday, late morning, but was already dry, so he had to have been born awhile before. He was either born Friday evening, some time overnight, or early Saturday (while an evening/night birth is rare, it does sometimes happen). I have heard of cria being born during the cooler nights, when it gets as hot as it has been (we have unusually warm weather right now).

We expected a boy, since Sancha seems to always alternate between male and female cria. We were surprised that she finally had color, not her typical white offspring. His color is very bright and shiny. It's hard to tell exactly what color he is. He may even be a dark fawn, or light to medium brown. It's so bright, that it looks lighter, but as it grows in at the skin it may be darker (often the fiber is lightened by amniotic fluid in the womb, this is why a true black might have brown tips). We'll have to watch it as it grows.

He looks like he is going to have a very woolly face (fiber all over his cheeks, chin and up to his nose). We love that woolly look! He also looks like he has nice fiber coverage on his legs. On his front legs, the color darkens almost to black by his feet. He sort of looks like he has boots on.

He has cork screw bundles and looks like he is going to be very crimpy. It's hard to tell fineness on a newborn, and density is difficult to determine when the fiber is so soft at this stage.

For each of our girls we have a theme to name their offspring. For Sancha, the theme is "nature". We initially decided on Mudslide for this boy. I don't know what we will call him for short (we usually end up having a nick name for them). I'm sure a nick name will develop over time.

Here he is, sired by our own Apollo, born from Sancha:





We are debating what to name him. We like Mudslide, but I also like Copper Head (call him Copper for short), or Copper Canyon. Sometimes names are hard to figure out.

Edit to say we did decide on a name: Our Copper Canyon, nick name is "Copper".