Song of the Month: A Horse in the Country

This is a Cowboy Junkies song from one of their less well-known albums (Black-Eyed Man, 1992). Basically a sad song about somebody in a dead end town, dead end life, and with change on her mind.

But for us, this is the song we sang while building the run-in shed. The song we sang while augering the fenceposts. Lining up the fenceposts. Hanging the fence. You get the idea.

Margo Timmins' voice is a thing of beauty. The arrangement is pretty good too, but we always come back to her voice. Wow. Plus on cold fall days, this is how our minds turn to winter's dark thoughts.

Two Views on a 6 C Rise in Temperature

Anyone who lives and works with living systems has to be paying at least some attention to the discussion of global climate change. This week a report from the Global Climate Report looked at the past decade's trend in carbon dioxide emissions.

In the past 10 years, the rate of CO2 release has increased by 29% - so not a 29% increase, but the year-to-year value is increasing 29%. This past year CO2 rose by 1.84 ppm (parts per million), but with this data, we would expect it to increase next year by 1.84 ppm x 1.29 = 2.38ppm next year.

Following this trend across the century, we end up with a 6 degree Celsius rise, according to the IPCC scenarios. 6 C is a lot of change - almost 10 degrees F. Definitely on the high end of the worst IPCC scenario.

2 Scientific Views of this study

1. It is difficult to establish a trend based on a single decade, especially with the inherent troubles with making a computer model of the whole atmosphere. More here on this view.
2. Any way you cut it, this points to the trouble with any rise in CO2 emissions - the trend shows that the greatest increases are taking place in the developing world (LDCs) as they industrialize their economies.

Which is right? Both, I think. We can't go "2012" on the data, yet we cannot allow the trend to continue. If a 2 C rise is the goal, then this trend shows we must cut our emissions even more aggressively.

Goat Humor!

Choosing For Breeding: Teat Size

This is from our Little Milkers website - it is one of four essays about heritability of traits in goats. Carol researched the genetics and actual heritability of major traits. This is the first of four articles summarizing the parts that are key to our breeding program this year.

The goal of any breeding program should be continuous improvement of traits - we should be seeking out the best possible matches for our does. That means not finding a buck, but picking the best buck to match against each individual doe. Not just rolling one buck into the pen, unless that buck is batting clean-up at the end of the season.

This week we have going back and forth about teat size - how big? Bigger teats are easier to milk because they contain more milk and so speed milking.

Heritability is a genetic term that means "How easy is it to change a trait in the offspring?" This is a double-edged sword because we want to change the less-desirable traits (small udders, teats that point outward, etc) and then keep the more-desirable traits.

• Udder and teat location traits have moderate heritability (> 0.40)

• Teat dimensions have high heritability ( > 0.70)

  
  

Those heritability numbers above tell us that teats are conserved and these are less likely to change, the doe will control that closely. Moms will give their daughters their own teats, but they are less likely to pass on their udder. It could be smaller or larger, meaty or butter smooth, etc.

Tetris' udder - a vast improvement on her mom (teat size!)

So one of our goals this year is to boost teat size for 3 of our senior does - Wiggy will be getting the job to try that out. But like all things, it is not perfect. Wiggy did a great job with improving Mina's udder in our retained daughter Tetris. Same was true for Zelda on teat size.

But we cannot count on him to repeat this exactly with does - this is what makes breeding time exciting.

A Cautionary Tale of Genetic Engineering

NPR carried this story last week - researchers that added in a gene for resistance to a virus found something interesting.

The fear with genetic engineering is that there could be "genetic drift" - the genes spread from the target. So the project added a gene (that is commonly added to squash) to a wild squash.

1. The added gene showed resistance to the virus.
2. But those plants were healthier and therefore attracted more bacteria.
3. And ultimately fared worse because the bacteria ate them!

Not saying this is a nail in the coffin for any genetic engineering, but it does point to the fact that genetic engineering is no more of a silver bullet than conventional genetic breeding programs.