First Cria of 2012

Today Latte had her cria, the first 2012 cria for our farm.

We welcomed a beautiful baby girl!!

Latte is a very attentive mother:

Baby is bonding and eating - yeah!!  (not exactly eating in the picture but she had been)

 

This evening the cria was shivering so Zack and I put a cria coat on her.  Latte did not like us messing with her baby.  The rest of the ladies had to check out what the fuss was about:

Baby weighed in at 14.2 pounds.  This is the smallest cria we've had (I couldn't find records on Shelby, she's the only one I can think of who may have been close to this weight).  Most of our cria are around 20 pounds, though that is at the top end of the average range (typical birth weight is about 14 to 20 pounds).  While small, she seems to have the hang of walking and nursing.  She shows no signs of being premature.

Right now her color looks to be a reddish mahogany brown, though we suspect she is actually a dark rose grey (the grey is often hard to tell at birth, especially if they are modern grey, the classic grey are easier to tell because they have the tuxedo look).  This baby's dam (mom), Latte, is fawn but has a secondary brown gene.  Her sire (dad), Tucker, is a classic light silver grey.  She must have gotten a secondary black gene from her sire and a secondary brown gene from her dam.  I love the dark colors so this is a dream color match!!  Only time will tell how grey she is.

No name yet for this little girl.  For each of our breeding girls we have a theme to name their offspring.  This is on purpose.  This way if someone asks me which dam a certain cria is out of, I know right away based on the name.  Also, naming these cria can take us days to decide, if we didn't have a theme it might take our family longer :)  Latte's theme is: drinks (she is Vanilla Latte, and her 2010 cria we named Ginger Ale).  I have some ideas for this newborn girl, but I need to wait to plead my case to my family.