Sunday 26 August 2012

Mother's milk, and fat lambs

Our lambs are growing fast:




Button has set the record, growing at an average 365.8 grams per day since birth (Stitch and Rap are nearly as fast, at 350 g/day). Today, 41 days old Button weighs 18.5kg. Most of this weight gain is thanks to copious quantities of his mother's milk. But part is explained by his enthusiastic feeding regime:



Trough scoff


The technical bit
This makes Button a full kilogram heavier than the heaviest lamb in the ANCRI/Autonomous University of Barcelona test series in February this year. ANCRI is the Catalan National Association for Ripollesa Sheep. In 2010 they ran two test groups of lambs to check growth rates. They ran another test in February 2012. The lambs in the test are a bit older than Button and Stitch; the test starts at around the point that the lamb stops suckling, around 40 days. The fastest-growing lamb in the February 2012 series put on weight at 364g/day. We'll see how well Button and Stitch compare.

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