Bentley and Brody

 We've had an interesting scenario play out here on the farm. 

Last fall, one of our bucks, Serrano, wouldn't stay in his pen and kept jumping out and into the doe pen. As a result, most of our does were bred to him. We had planned on using AI on a few does, and decided not to let that reprobate buck spoil all of our plans, and AI'ed Clare and Bunny, even though Serrano had already bred them. Five months later, Bunny had triplet bucks that looked like neither of the sires. Two weeks ago, we pulled hair for DNA tests, and eagerly awaited the results, though we felt sure that they were Serrano kids. After a week of waiting, I got this message in my email box. 

Please note that results are reported on an individual basis. If you have submitted more than one animal or have requested multiple test types, all results may not be sent at the same time for animals submitted together.

Parentage and Genetic Marker results for UB KR3/K14 A(ADG11993:

UB KR3/K14 A UNR20182323 qualifies as an offspring of MISSDEE'S AR SERRANO PA1870106 without consideration of the dam.

"Oh," says I, "they are both Serrano kids, just like I thought." I forwarded the message to Mom, and was surprised when her response was, "Who is that?" I reread the message for the 6th time, and finally saw that it says, "Please note that results are reported on an individual basis.... etc." By the tattoo information, we knew that it was Brody now, but wondered why it was taking so long for Bentley's results to come back. 

Last Friday, early in the morning, I found a mysterious message in my inbox, the subject line of which said, "DNA testing results - contains exclusion" Whatever an exclusion was, I didn't stop to think. I quickly opened it, and found this. 

Parentage and Genetic Marker results for UB KR3/K13 A(ADG11992):

MISSDEE'S AR SERRANO PA1870106 (ADG10731) is excluded as a possible sire of UB KR3/K13 A UNR20182321 in 2 genetic systems regardless of the dam.

Bentley is not a Serrano kid, which means our AI took and we have twins(because the third kid died) with different sires!

We were stoked to learn this, and now we have to decide which kid to keep for breeding!

Mom and I both originally had our eye on the bigger, bolder, Bentley, even before we knew whose kid he was, but today I went and took some pictures of them, and found some differences that make me lean towards Brody now. 

 The main thing is their front legs. Notice how Brody, on the left, has nice straight legs, whereas Bentley has quite crooked legs. 

 This view is harder to tell, but again, Brody has better front legs. Bentley, on the left, has an oddly angled cannon bone(between the knee and hoof)whereas Brody's is nice and straight. Bentley also has weaker pasterns in the rear legs.

 

Both look equal from the back, and are wide and straight. 

 So I dunno. Do these things change? Do they really matter for what we are breeding for? I think we will just wait longer and see, and go from there.