Crystal Balls

I spotted an interesting bit of data on two sibling rams that made me pause for a moment. Usually, when rams are born, they simply inherit an average of the NSIP maternal traits coming from their parents. So their scores will be identical here, and won’t typically change until those rams have female progeny, which are subsequently bred, feeding data back up the pedigree to their sires. Where the rams will differ distinctly is on weight data, once it’s collected on them, and averaged with the scores coming out of their pedigree history. But a quick glance at these twins highlights something notable in their data at four months of age:

	BWT	WWT	PWWT	PSC	NLB	NLW	MBWT	MWWT	Maternal$	Hair
5007	0.354	2.033	3.247	0.552	23%	20%	-0.01	0.447	117.72	108.61
5008	0.361	1.669	2.263	0.372	22%	19%	-0.01	0.433	116.16	103.39

 

 

Summer Doings

We still have good green grass, but not for much longer with this string of no rain we’ve had. It’s unusual for it to get hot and sunny consistently before 4th of July here; but the entire month of June has felt like August! There is a possible thundershower in the forecast for next week, so crossing my fingers the pasture gets some watering. It sounds like our hay will be delivered next week, which will be a welcome backup: I can feed out of that store if I have to rest the pastures for a while. The pasture pictured above is mostly reed canarygrass. Though it is often an unmanageable pain in the butt, it is a great grower during dry times, since it has such deep roots. It will likely tap the water table no matter how long we go without rain, so it can continue to grow back after being grazed. It produces a huge volume of very nutritious grass, as well.

 

The Curse of the Garmin Zombies

In the olden days, people navigated the earth using a combination of maps, agreed-upon street numbering and naming conventions, and indicator signage. When folks wanted to go somewhere, first, they would consult a map. Then, as they drove, they would follow the map readings to identify turns along the way, helped by signs which indicated the location of the turns.

 

The Central Tendency of Twinning

In Katahdins, there is generally a preference for breeding ewes which have twinning genetics. We know that ewes ovulating more than one egg per cycle is heritable; and that when we select for it, we shift the bell curve toward the right: toward multiple births. So, some consider this a by-product of twinning selection, that we often get triplets or quads. This phenomenon, in itself, is a bell curve; with most ewes in a given season offering twins, and a smaller percentage having singles or triplets (and rarely, four or more). A 200% crop is fairly standard in our breed.

Because of this focus, it is considered a best practice when selecting breeding stock, to take into consideration whether the animal has twinning genetics, or not. For most people, the tendency is to ask about a particular animal “is she a twin?” This is a good start, but I’d like to illustrate why this “is a” descriptor is not as good as knowing the entire history of the dam’s twinning record. Or, better yet, her family’s entire history of twinning.

 

Engineers Week: Disrupting the Pink Aisle

In honor of Engineers Week, I thought I’d highlight a neat new company I’ve been watching with interest. GoldieBlox – a start-up founded by Debbie Sterling. Debbie is a mechanical engineer. She shares the same concern that most in our industry have: why aren’t more girls going into engineering?

Unlike some career paths which are bastions of manhood and very hostile and unwelcoming to women, I think engineering is hardly so. Engineers are generally very focused on smarts and output, and barely care about (or even notice!) a person’s gender or other physical traits. Given that most “boy nerds” grew up with some level of social ostracism as punishment for their smarts; adult boy nerds are rarely prone to exhibiting discrimination based on outward appearance. Rather, geeks of all types tend to band together based on their common love of math and science. Our field, as a whole, is very concerned about the shortage of engineers. Especially female engineers. So, a lot of effort is being invested in studying and trying to remedy the problem.