Wednesday 10 August 2011

Birthing statistics

It has been a dull wet and miserable day today, more like October than August.  I'm glad we have now had all our babies for the year and they are growing on nicely.  Even Brinley put on a decent amount of weight today, despite still not being overly keen on his bottle.

As the weather has been poor I've been doing some inside jobs today, I managed to get slightly side tracked at one point and was studying the birthing statistics for the year. 

The average Barnacre gestation period was lower than normal this year at 343 days.  Our maidens average was 345 days so not much different from the main herd.  Our birth weight is also up this year at 8.25kg, with the two extremes being 11.36kg and 5.77kg.

I also looked at knitwear sales to date which are also up on the same period last year which is good.  The second half of the year is obviously the busy period for our exclusive knitwear so hopefully it will continue the increasing trend.

Back out in the fields Brinley still wasn't keen on his bottle, he did come to me tonight but decided when he got there he didn't want to latch one.  With some encouragement, or more like 'assistance' he took most of his bottle.  He had put on a decent amount of weight today which is a good sign and I'm hoping the glucose in his milk may encourage him to like it again.

Oh yes I almost forgot, yes it is me on the digger Jayne!

2 comments:

Rosemary said...

Our births have also been generally earlier but birth weights higher - interesting!

Judi said...

Our everage is 337 from previous years so we are waiting for our maiden to deliver, thinking that, at 343 days, she's late but maybe she's read your blog! I was giving up thinking she was pregnant but still keeping a close eye on her!